One of the best treatments to date of America’s rapid transition from the Depression to the wartime power it became.
A richly detailed history of the rebuilding of American military power in the run-up to World War II.
In 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, the U.S. Army had fewer than 120,000 men in uniform; Gen. Douglas MacArthur said they all could have fit into Yankee Stadium. Recognizing that war was all but inevitable, President Franklin Roosevelt took steps to revitalize the nation’s military, and his most important move was likely the appointment of Gen. George Marshall as chief of staff of the Army. Marshall had been prepared for the job due to his leadership in the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, in which young men learned discipline and skills that coincidentally prepared them for life in the Army. The CCC, writes Dickson, “became a driving force for improving the Army and facilitating the education and professional development of key officers.” The establishment of a peacetime draft in 1940—against strong opposition from isolationists in Congress and elsewhere—was also a key element. Marshall gave the Army’s officer corps a vital shot in the arm with his creation of Officer Candidate School, allowing talented men to rise to command positions without a degree from a traditional military academy. Dickson also highlights the war games that took place in 1941, especially a large exercise in Louisiana just before Pearl Harbor where both Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton proved their abilities. The author provides a wealth of fascinating detail; even those familiar with the general history of the period will learn something new. Especially intriguing are Dickson’s discussions of the rise of the United Service Organizations, with shows headlined by Bob Hope and other stars, and the implications of a universal draft for black Americans.
One of the best treatments to date of America’s rapid transition from the Depression to the wartime power it became.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4767-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
HISTORY | MILITARY | UNITED STATES | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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