All-Out for Victory!: Magazine Advertising and the World War II Home Front Book

I am genuinely surprised that this book wasn't published by a vanity press.

While well researched, many of the books conclusions are based on conjecture and modern thought rather than an understanding of the period, and a rose-colored view of the American population's outlook on national identity is inserted throughout without any basis for making that claim.

It appears the author previously wrote a book about music, of which he is something of an expert despite his background in English rather than history, and that book's success prompted him to keep writing about the period, though this time on advertising, which he apparently knows very little about.

With a better handle on secondary sources and works on American society in general rather than just advertising specifically would have worked wonders for this work. As it stands though, this book offers the scholar of 20th century cultural America no more than an assessment of war advertising in leading magazines with no really valuable analysis to speak of.