Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation

Extract

Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation. By Suzanne Mettler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 280p. $30.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.

Americans are not very good citizens—they do not participate actively in civic life, follow public affairs closely, or vote at a level comparable to other industrialized democracies. It has not always been this way, of course. A long line of commentators and scholars has celebrated the robust civic engagement demonstrated by Americans in the past; today, a cottage industry has developed to lament the sad state of contemporary citizenship and probe the causes of its decline. Scholars are not the only ones invested in explaining the downward trend in participation. The phenomenon has become a matter for ideological contestation, with conservatives (and some radicals) blaming the modern state for reducing citizens to passive dependents, while liberals insist the fault lies with other culprits such as the corporate media.