Montgomery in the Good War is a richly textured account of a southern city and its people during World War II.

 

Using newspaper accounts, interviews, letters, journals, and his own memory of the time, Wesley Newton reconstructs wartime-era Montgomery, Alabama--a sleepy southern capital that was transformed irreversibly during World War II.
 

The war affected every segment of Montgomery society: black and white, rich and poor, male and female, those who fought in Europe and the Pacific and those who stayed on the home front. Newton follows Montgomerians chronologically through the war from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima as they experience patriotism, draft and enlistment, rationing, scarcity drives, and the deaths of loved ones. His use of small vignettes based on personal recollections adds drama and poignancy to the story.
 

Montgomery in the Good War is an important reminder that wars are waged at home as well as abroad and that their impact reverberates well beyond those who fight on the front lines. Those who came of age during the war will recognize themselves in this moving volume. It will also be enlightening to those who have lived in times of relative peace.

Wesley Phillips Newton (1925-2012) was Professor Emeritus of History at Auburn University and coeditor, with Robert R. Rea, of Wings of Gold: An Account of Naval Aviation Training in World War II.

 

Allen Cronenberg is former Director of the Center for Arts and Humanities at Auburn University and author of Forth to the Mighty Conflict: Alabama and World War II.

"An entertaining account of how one southern city experienced the Second World War. . . . A native of Montgomery, . . . Newton employs this personal touch effectively, producing a human portrait of the war's impact that is also grounded in historical evidence. . . . Newton offers a well-written, colorful, and effectively impressionistic portrait of Montgomery during World War II that is valuable to all readers."

"This is an engrossing book, bursting with lively anecdotes and personal stories. It reconstructs, as few other books have, the wartime scene in an urban place. To read Wesley Philipps Newton's ‘portrait of a southern city’ is to discover how Montgomerians, black and white, experienced World War II and how they, as citizens and soldiers, dealt with wartime dangers, anxieties, and losses. The book is particularly effective at linking the home front to the battlefront, in personalizing the war by connecting the stories of those left behind to those overseas."