NYS Writers Institute: Conversation with historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee David Nasaw
David Nasaw is the author of The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II (2025). The heroism of the men and women who won WWII may be well documented, but we know too little about the pain and hardships the veterans endured. Contrary to the prevailing narratives of triumph, this new history presents the largely unacknowledged realities the veterans — and the nation — faced, radically reshaping our understanding of American history.
The Wall Street Journal said, “As [Nasaw]... makes emphatically clear, a good war is an oxymoron. Just wars there are and necessary wars, but there are no good wars.”
Cosponsored by the History Department of the College of Arts and Sciences at UAlbany.
David Nasaw
7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 7
University at Albany
Campus Center West Auditorium
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany NY 12222
Free and open to the public.
Books will be available for sale.
A signing will follow the conversation.
About the author
David Nasaw previous books include The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (2020), named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and History Today, and, according to The Economist, one of the "six must-read books on the Second World War"; The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (2012), a New York Times Five Best Non-Fiction Books of the Year; Andrew Carnegie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the winner of the New-York Historical Society's American History Book Prize; and The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, winner of the Bancroft Prize.
He is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History Emeritus at the CUNY Graduate Center and a past president of the Society of American Historians. In 2023, Nasaw was honored by the New York Public Library as a “Library Lion.” His father served in the Army Medical Corps in Eritrea during World War II.
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3497121-0
