It's a great book for an 11 year old - the 17-ager may find it too kid-oriented. Adults will find it interesting, informative, and might want to make the projects, too.
It's divided into informative chapters, mostly dealing with the Home Front, but also spying and concentration camps (appropriately). Projects included are things like: Airplane spotter models, tabletop victory gardens, ration cakes, silly putty, flipbooks, paper cranes, secret codes, ration kits, Care Packages, recruitment posters, victory banners, and more.
This is all with easy-to-understand, but substantial, dosed of history, trivia, terminology, photos and illustrations. It highlights pretty fairly the contributions of Navajo code-talkers, African-Americans, Women, Civilians and Soldiers. It more than touches on the plights of Jews and Japanese-Americans as well.
It really is a fair, broad-ranging, pertinent overview of the times and the people and places (maps!) of WW2.
For the 17-yr. old, I would probably recommend something else. If you want to keep it WW2, I would suggest maybe Band of Brothers (DVD set if cost little object, book otherwise), or
Where the Birds Never Sing (enjoyable, easy to read, but a good personal account) or the any of the Brothers in Arms video/computer games for whatever system he has. The PC versions are pretty cheap and historically/storywise the best of the WW2 shooters. (these games had a definite part in getting our son interested in WW2).
This is the wii version of two of the games combined, but there are versions for everything. Highly recommended for gamers with a history bug in them. Players will learn about strategy/tactics in ways other games don't teach, as well as lots of unlockable information about arms, equipment and military history of the European campaign, all based on actual occurances.
How's (all) that?
EDIT: Here's the gamespot page for
Road to Hill 30 for the gamer (if that's what he is), which is the game I'd start with, if you have any interest in it.