Losing the War

Authors are not responsible for the cover designs of their books, and for every cover proudly posted on campus office doors or Facebook pages, some smaller number have been greeted with a vague sense of disappointment. Within the historical profession, of course, dust jackets matter little; we all understand that complexities of historical argument are not easily translated into visual design, and in any case we know better than to judge a book by its cover. Nonetheless, the best place to start making sense of these two identically titled books may be with their covers.

The dust jackets of both Kathleen Frydl's and Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin's versions of The GI Bill picture soldiers returning from war. Altschuler and Blumin's veterans are the AP photo version, jubilant men crowded onto the deck of a transport ship, grinning and waving as they pull into dock. The Signal Corps photograph on Frydl's book portrays a different homecoming, the men somber, no more than silhouettes, dark shapes in helmets and heavy packs, rifles evident, heads bowed, trudging single file down the gangplank to shore. The black-and-white photograph on Altschuler and Blumin's book is embedded in patriotism, the book's title rendered in red, white, and blue, a strip of full-color U.S. flag running along the cover's top edge. The black-and-white photograph that fills Frydl's cover is washed, top to bottom, in dark, murky green. In one way, the covers' different promises are fulfilled: the first book is forthright and generally celebratory, a straightforward work with little irony and no hidden layers. The second is full of ambivalence and ambiguity. But in a more fundamental way, these images are misleading. For in The GI Bills of Frydl, Altschuler, and Blumin, war offers only the most distant of contexts.

The GI Bill is an American icon, one of the key stories of bipartisan domestic triumph in twentieth century U.S. history. In popular memory, the story of the GI Bill is a story of success, of a program created in gratitude, meant to offer some partial repayment of the nation's debt to those who had sacrificed to defend their country in a difficult but necessary war. By any account, its reach was vast: GI Bill unemployment benefits smoothed the often difficult transition from military service to civilian life for millions of those demobilized at the end of World War II. GI Bill education benefits helped more than two million veterans attend college or begin postgraduate programs and an additional 5.6 million to enroll in some form of job training or certificate program. (The Bill's education provision alone cost the nation more than the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe in the years following the war.) GI Bill loan guarantees made it possible for four million veterans to buy homes on extremely favorable terms and for others to secure farmland or to start businesses. By 1955, 78 percent of the nation's military veterans had benefitted directly from at least one provision of the GI Bill. That translates into 12.4 million people—roughly one in thirteen of all living Americans, or one for every four U.S. households. The opportunities offered through the GI Bill, millions of Americans could claim, had changed their lives. One can make a strong argument that it also changed the lives of their families for generations to come.

Note to academic publishers: these two works make the case that a good historical topic isn't exhausted by one book. Both versions of The GI Bill are worthwhile, but they are profoundly different from one another and will find different audiences. Altschuler and Blumin's GI Bill is, as its title suggests, a history of the GI Bill. Frydl's GI Bill is a...