Fussell stated that he relished the inevitable controversy of "" (1983) and indulged his increasing public status as a loved or hated "curmudgeon" in the rant called "BAD: or, The Dumbing of America" (1991). In between, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays" (1988) confirmed his war against governmental and military doublespeak and prepared the way for "Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War" (1989). The epiphany of his earlier essay, "My War", found full expression in his memoir "Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic" (1996), "My Adolescent illusions, largely intact to that moment, fell away all at once, and I suddenly knew I was not and never would be in a world that was reasonable or just". The last book by Fussell published while he was alive, "The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944–45" (2003) was once again concerned with the experience of combat in World War II.