When Is Daddy Coming Home?: An American Family During World War II

Now in paperback, a bestselling memoir of a family on the home front during World War II

World War II was coming to a close in Europe and Richard Haney was only four years old when the telegram arrived at his family's home in Janesville, Wisconsin. That moment, when Haney learned of his father's death in the final months of fighting, changed his and his mother's lives forever.

In this powerful book, Haney explores the impact of war on an American family. He skillfully weaves together those memories with his parents' wartime letters and his mother's recollections to create a unique blend of history and memoir. Through his father's letters he reveals the war's effect on a man who fought in the Battle of the Bulge with the 17th Airborne but wanted nothing more than to return home. Haney illuminates life on the home front in small-town America as well, describing how profoundly the war changed such communities.

With When Is Daddy Coming Home?, Richard Haney makes an exceptional contribution to the literature on the Greatest Generation--one that is both devastatingly personal and representative of what families all over America endured during that testing time.

Author: Richard Carlton Haney
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Published: 09/17/2024
Pages: 160
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9781976600401
ISBN10: 1976600405
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
- History | United States | 20th Century

About the Author

Richard Carlton Haney earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later graduated from West Point's post-Ph.D. military history program and the army's National Security Seminar at Carlisle Barracks. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he taught courses in twentieth-century United States history, American military history, and Wisconsin history. The UW-Whitewater organization Students for an Accessible Society twice presented him with its teaching excellence award.