"Up Front," by Bill Mauldin (Norton, 228 pages, $24.95).
Anyone left alive who has any memories of the experience of World War II in the United States will find a sort of ecstasy of nostalgia in this new edition of Mauldin's battlefront cartoons in Stars and Stripes and his 1945 text that recounted their evolution. Wounded in combat in Italy, never far from the life of infantry grunts, Mauldin gave life to Willie and Joe, who became the immortal cartoon incarnations of footsoldiers at their most skeptical, human, resigned, inventive, insightful, resentful, accepting -- and indomitably courageous. Anyone who has no awareness of that war beyond a couple of dates can learn more about it reading Mauldin's story and getting to know his heroes than in any other book I know.
