Bill Mauldin

Up Front

Foreword by Stephen E. Ambrose

The 1945 classic book of text and drawings with a spectacular foreword by Stephen E. Ambrose.

Up Front is one of the most famous books to emerge from the Second World War and remains an icon of the “greatest generation.” In his drawings of the infantry dogfaces Willie and Joe, done while he himself fought in campaigns in Sicily and Italy, Bill Mauldin created the immortal archetypes of the American fighting man. He knew, as one who had been on the front lines and in the trenches, that Willie and Joe—with their unshaven faces, their gallows humor, their fortitude, and their dislike of privilege and cant—exemplify something enduring and noble about Americans at war. Up Front is a vivid piece of living history and a potent reminder of the sacrifices of the men who fought and won our greatest war.

Born in 1921, Bill Mauldin squeezed several lifetimes into his eighty-one years. In addition to cartooning, he acted in Hollywood movies, ran for Congress, piloted airplanes, wrote several books and hundreds of articles, and won two Pulitzer Prizes, the first for his wartime cartoons. He died in 2003.