A succinct account of America's wide-ranging involvement in WW II from a distinguished duo. Eschewing a chronological format, James (Military History/Virginia Military Institute) and his longtime collaborator Wells (Refighting the Last War, 1992, etc.) provide discrete perspectives on how and where the US was engaged. To begin with, they assess the prePearl Harbor preparedness of America's armed forces and the industrial complex that soon became (in FDR's felicitous phrase) ``the arsenal of democracy.'' Covered as well are such other aspects of home-front activities as the effective conscription of scientists who worked on weapons-related projects, domestic race relations, the remote camps established for Axis POWs, rationing, and the Servicemen's Readjustment Act (a.k.a. the GI Bill of Rights). The authors go on to deliver concise briefings on the major campaigns in which US airmen, marines, sailors, and soldiers participated. Starting with the Battle of the Atlantic, they review all of the important Allied offensives in the European and Mediterranean theaters, which by the spring of 1945 resulted in Nazi Germany's capitulation. James and Wells then examine how American naval and ground forces turned a series of initial defeats into a decisive triumph over the Japanese across the vast reaches of the Pacific. At the close, they offer a moving tribute to the enlisted men who did most of the fighting and dying on foreign fields. In a final reckoning of costs and casualties, moreover, the authors insist that WW II was not, as popularly supposed, a good or glorious war but the most brutal and murderous conflict in the blood-soaked annals of a weary world. As inclusive and compact a rundown as general readers are likely to get any time soon. The consistently absorbing text has 11 useful maps, an index, and a savvy discussion of sources.
Pub Date: March 3, 1995
ISBN: 1-56663-072-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Wingo rather frothily admits that, like ``all good sea stories,'' her reminiscence of her stint in the WAVES has been ``embellished.'' Now a retired teacher and a Santa Monica community activist, Wingo remembers feeling like Joan of Arc at her enlistment in the WAVES (Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service) in 1944 at the age of 20. An Irish Catholic raised in Detroit, she attends boot camp at Hunter College in the Bronx, where the ``barracks'' are a five-story apartment building. Recruits are called Ripples (``Little Waves, silly''), and Wingo says that ``boot camp is like a harder Girl Scout camp'' where you learn that a ``misbegotten granny knot could screw up the whole war.'' Her bunkmates (the characters are composites) include Coralee Tolliver, a chunky ``hillbilly'' whom she despises (though Wingo later serves as her maid of honor), and Barbara Lee Corman, who calls everyone ``honeychile'' and juggles five ``fian-says.'' The trio gets assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago where they train on guns. Following a Navy Day parade in which Wingo, in full dress, rides astraddle a torpedo, she and her buddies are shipped out to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay to train the men in the Armed Guard for at-sea duty while they, as women, will remain ashore. Wingo falls for a tattooed sailor named Blackie (he calls her ``Toots'') until he admits he visits prostitutes because it ``saves the nice girls for when we want to marry them.'' She describes a chaotic V-J Day celebration and a whirlwind tour of New York City; and she offers an entire chapter about getting drunk and sick aboard a Russian ship anchored in San Francisco Bay. Jocular and occasionally appealing, this suffers from an almost complete lack of hard information or historical perspective on the very real contributions of the WAVES.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1994
ISBN: 1-55750-924-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A strongly argued defense of polyester.
Forget the bad music, embarrassing clothes, and sleazy sexuality: Schulman (History/Boston Univ.) is here to set the record straight on the disco decade.
After a preface that features an odd encomium of his own work (“It offers a rich, evocative portrait of the United States in the 1970s”), the author settles in to explore his thesis—i.e., “The Seventies transformed American economic and cultural life as much as, if not more than, the revolutions in manners and morals of the 1920s and the 1960s.” He begins with 1968, a year that witnessed assassinations, political unrest, and a surprising surge of support for George Wallace. He offers a devastating assessment of the Nixon presidency, but credits Nixon with the insight to recognize and exploit the shifts of political power taking place in the US (from the old North and Northeast to the new South and West). Schulman also assesses the demographic and intellectual forces that fractured the old “melting pot” consensus and created the now-pervasive notion that diversity is the highest social good. He also chronicles the emergence of the Christian right (“This parallel universe proved surprisingly vast”) and the rise of the New South. Schulman writes compassionately about Jimmy Carter—but recognizes his utter inability to lead the country. And, while he admits Reagan’s unquestioned contributions to the American resurgence, Schulman recognizes that “The Reagan recovery did little for working people.” Throughout the 1970s, Schulman maintains, there was a “southernization of American life” and a decline in social and political activism. The author devotes considerable attention to the popular culture (especially films, TV shows, and music) of the period, but he largely ignores serious literature and the other arts—and he is given to seeing much in little, as when he attributes great cultural importance to Evel Knievel’s farewell tour and to Billie Jean King’s whupping of the feckless Bobby Riggs.
A strongly argued defense of polyester.Pub Date: May 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-82814-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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