內容簡介:In search of "the best America there ever was," bestselling author and award-winning journalist Bob Greene finds it in a small Nebraska town few people pass through today -- a town where Greene discovers the echoes of the most touching love story imaginable: a love story between a country and its sons.
During World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, Nebraska, on troop trains en route to their ultimate destinations in Europe and the Pacific. The tiny town, wanting to offer the servicemen warmth and support, transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen.
Every day of the year, every day of the war, the Canteen -- staffed and funded entirely by local volunteers -- was open from five a.m. until the last troop train of the day pulled away after midnight. Astonishingly, this remote plains community of only 12,000 people provided welcoming words, friendship, and baskets of food and treats to more than six million GIs by the time the war ended.
In this poignant and heartwarming eyewitness history, based on interviews with North Platte residents and the soldiers who once passed through, Bob Greene tells a classic, lost-in-the-mists-of-time American story of a grateful country honoring its brave and dedicated sons.
作者簡介:Bob Greene is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune. As a magazine writer, he has been lead columnist for Life and Esquire; as a broadcast journalist, he has served as contributing correspondent for ABC News Nightline. His news commentaries can be seen on television superstation WGN. His bestselling books include Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War; Be True to Your School;Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael Jordan; Good Morning Merry Sunshine; and, with his sister, D.G. Fulford, To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come. His first novel, All Summer Long, has been published in a paperback edition.