Person

Elizabeth D. Samet

Bylines

Why World War II Wasn’t All That Good.

West Point scholar argues ‘hazy, rosy’ myth shaped false sense of U.S. destiny.

by Elizabeth D. Samet, Liz Mineo via Harvard Gazette on January 25, 2022
America's Black Soldiers

The long history behind the Army's Jim Crow forts.

by Elizabeth D. Samet via The American Scholar on July 11, 2020
Moral Courage and the Civil War

Monuments ask us to look at the past, but how they do it exposes crucial aspects of the present.

by Elizabeth D. Samet via The American Scholar on September 3, 2019

Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness

Elizabeth D. Samet

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Actor Tom Hanks and President George W. Bush stand on stage at the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. on May 29, 2004.

Destructive Myths

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.

by Jeff Faux via Dissent on August 30, 2022

A boy holds a toy plane aloft, blissfully ignorant of shells exploding in the background. Illustration by Gérard DuBois.

The Cost of Sentimentalizing War

Has the American myth of the Good War helped ensnare us in bad ones?

by Carlos Lozada via The New Yorker on November 17, 2021

Photo of a tank and soldiers with guns raised in forest.

A New History of World War II

A new book argues that the conflict was a battle for empire.

by Daniel Immerwahr via The Atlantic on April 4, 2022

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