Of the more than 16 million Americans who served during the Second World War, fewer than one million of these heroic men and women are still with us today. Now more than ever, there is a heightened sense of responsibility and urgency to collect, circulate, and learn from the accounts of our veterans and their loved ones. In The Things They Kept, Carolyn Wagner tells these stories as preserved objects—the things that have seen war. Every tear, every blemish, and every mark forms both an individual and collective narrative of the Second World War. By taking notice of these material items saturated with human history, we widen our understanding of how others managed, sacrificed, and survived in the world we share.