Walk into any Veterans of Foreign Wars facility about an hour before last call. Three barstools down is an expert on all things political and military; or, as he says, he's “smarter than any of those damn politicians or the idiots who went to West Point.” With little prompting he will tell you and anyone else within earshot what is wrong with the country and how it can be fixed—“if anyone would listen to me which they won't.”

Joel Davidson has captured this voice expressed in writing from the Spanish American War to the Cold War and Vietnam. But along with the amateur generals and armchair warriors of the title, he has also captured the voice of U.S. citizens desperate to help their country in a time of critical need. For example, in 1943 a letter writer reaching General Hap Arnold called himself “a little American like millions of others...

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