The myth of the greatest generation

How great were the greatest?

American marines at Guadalcanal
American marines at Guadalcanal
(Image credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

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How great was the greatest generation? That's the question raised by a research project at Virginia Tech, which went public on Pearl Harbor Day earlier this month. Called "The American Soldier in World War II," the volunteer initiative transcribed and digitized responses to surveys administered to hundreds of thousands of military personnel between 1940 and 1941.

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Samuel Goldman

Samuel Goldman is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and director of the Politics & Values Program. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow in Religion, Ethics, & Politics at Princeton University. His books include God's Country: Christian Zionism in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and After Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). In addition to academic research, Goldman's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.