"Preserving the Legacy: Creating the National WWII Museum," with author Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller

In his new book "Preserving the Legacy: Creating theNational WWII Museum," Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, cofounder of the museum with historian Stephen E. Ambrose and now its president and CEO emeritus, recounts in great detail how the road to today’s massive museum campus waspocked with craters.

The decade-plus quest by Ambrose and Mueller to navigate the National D-Day Museum, an inaugural incarnation, toward its opening 25 years ago was a story of tireless networking, courting of political support both locally and nationally, and fundraising, the retelling of which “getsboring to people,” Mueller said, but “it’s part of the story of how the museum was built.”

The book’s longtime working title, Mueller jokes, was "An Unlikely Story. "

Images accompanying the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.