Booked for Lunch History Reading Group at Wilton Historical Society

Come to “Booked for Lunch”: A History Reading Group

Discussing Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II by Richard Reeves

The Wilton Historical Society hosts a reading group that focuses on books with a historical bent. The book to be discussed on Friday, June 30 from 12:30 – 2:00 is Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II by Richard Reeves. Bestselling author Richard Reeves provides an authoritative account of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens during World War II. The book was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice title.

“Highly readable . . . [A] vivid and instructive reminder of what war and fear can do to civilized people.” —Evan Thomas, The New York Times Book Review

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed an executive order that forced more than 120,000 Japanese Americans into primitive camps for the rest of war. Their only crime: looking like the enemy.
In Infamy, acclaimed historian Richard Reeves delivers a sweeping narrative of this atrocity. Men we usually consider heroes—FDR, Earl Warren, Edward R. Murrow—were in this case villains. We also learn of internees who joined the military to fight for the country that had imprisoned their families, even as others fought for their rights all the way to the Supreme Court. The heart of the book, however, tells the poignant stories of those who endured years in “war relocation camps,” many of whom suffered this injustice with remarkable grace.
Racism and war hysteria led to one of the darkest episodes in American history. But by recovering the past, Infamy has given voice to those who ultimately helped the nation better understand the true meaning of patriotism.