The GI Bill Boys: A Memoir

In her warm and witty new memoir, Stella Suberman charms readers with her personal perspective as she recalls the original 1940s GI Bill. As she writes of the bill and the epic events that spawned it, she manages, in her crisp way, to personalise and humanises them in order to entertain and to educate. Although her story is in essence that of two Jewish families, it echoes the story of thousands of Americans of that period.

Her narrative begins with her Southern family and her future husbands Northern one she designates herself and her husband as Depression kids as they struggle through the Great Depression. In her characteristically lively style, she recounts the major happenings of the era: the Bonus March of World War I veterans; the attack on Pearl Harbor; the Roosevelt/New Deal years; the rise of Hitlers Nazi party and the Holocaust; the second World War; and the post-war period when veterans returned home to a collapsed and jobless economy. She then takes the reader to the moment when the GI Bill appeared, the glorious moment, as she writes, when returning veterans realised they had been given a future.

As her husband begins work on his Ph.D., she focuses on the GI men and their wives as college life consumed them. It is the time also of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare, of the creation of an Israeli state, of the Korean War, and of other important issues, and she discusses them forthrightly. Throughout this section she writes of how the GIs doggedly studied, engaged in critical thinking (perhaps for the first time), discovered their voices. As she suggests, it was not the 1930s anymore, and the GI Bill boys were poised to give America an authentic and robust middle class.

Besides the Depression experience, Suberman treats life during World War II, racism, the ennui of soldiers after the war, and the promise brought by the GI Bill, as well as changes veterans had undergone as reflected in their behavior as students after the war. Readers will find the book and the writing style enthralling. - Mark K. Bauman, editor, Southern Jewish History

In her warm and witty new memoir, Stella Suberman charms readers with her personal perspective as she recalls the original 1940s G. I. Bill. As she writes of the bill and the epic events that spawned it, she manages, in her crisp way, to personalize and humanizes them in order to entertain and to educate. Although her story is in essence that of two Jewish families, it echoes the story of thousands of Americans of that period.

Her narrative begins with her Southern family and her future husband's Northern one -she designates herself and her husband as Depression kids -as they struggle through the Great Depression. In her characteristically lively style, she recounts the major happenings of the era: the Bonus March of World War I veterans; the attack on Pearl Harbor; the Roosevelt/New Deal years; the rise of Hitler's Nazi party and the Holocaust; the second World War; and the post-war period when veterans returned home to a collapsed and jobless economy. She then takes the reader to the moment when the G.I. Bill appeared, the glorious moment, as she writes, when returning veterans realized they had been given a future.

As her husband begins work on his Ph.D., she focuses on the G.I. men and their wives as college life consumed them. It is the time also of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the 'Red Scare', of the creation of an Israeli state, of the Korean War, and of other important issues, and she discusses them forthrightly.