Reviews for The American Home Front: 1941-1942

The average rating for The American Home Front: 1941-1942 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-02-20 00:00:00 Marybeth Mallios Reading this book is a remarkable experience. It's a literal road-trip through America of the early 1940s. English journalist Alistair Cooke, curious about the effects of World War II across America, but wise enough not to rely on newspaper pronouncements about the war effort or the public's patriotism, set off to explore the entire country and see for himself how the war was affecting people's lives, and if possible, how they felt about it. The answer, of course, was neither simple nor small. The term "home front" here does not describe, say, a picture of what day-to-day life was like for the average middle-class American family in your typical American town. It's rather a sweeping tour of a big and incredibly varied country where the effects of the war were felt in hundreds of different ways, each specific to its own particular bit of American landscape and culture. As Cooke puts it, "You learn...that 'war' means all things to all men, but mostly it means the day-by-day effect on their own job or crop." This being the case, there's a strong focus on the economic impacts of the war on different industries, professions, agriculture, labor, housing. We're taken not just through shipyards and defense plants, but are shown the effects of wartime demand and regulations on everything from lumber to cattle-ranching to insurance to the growing of oranges, beets or dates. We see towns teeming with an inrush of migrant workers to suddenly-sprung-up war plants, farmers lamenting the loss of workers to the draft or factories. Cooke visits small towns and big cities, talks to people in diners and drugstores and railroad stations and by the side of the road. Some of the moments are unforgettable'the quiet, grieving New Mexico town which lost a National Guard unit on Bataan; the encounter with the boy driving an ice-cream truck on a lonely California road while on furlough from the Army; or the wry humor of the Miami luxury hotels driving a bargain with the military taking them over for training schools. My original reason for picking up this book was for research, with a hope that I'd learn some specifics about that average home-front life I mentioned above; and while I didn't exactly find that, I did glean one important thing. I think this book reminds you that everyday life (in all its American varieties) didn't just stop or become entirely wrapped up in "the war effort"'it wasn't all blackouts and scrap drives and victory gardens. Reading books about the military campaigns can kind of give you the skewed impression that life at home just slowed to a stop and waited while the men were overseas. But it didn't. People didn't just sit by the radio waiting for war news; they still got up and ate and chose what clothes to wear and went to church and school and work, even if wartime conditions changed how they did some of these things. Part of what makes it interesting is Cooke's point of view. An Englishman, but also an American citizen who had evidently lived in the country for some time when he made this trip, he has enough of an outsider's perspective to be somewhat dispassionate, but enough knowledge of America and Americans to talk about them with understanding. Plus he's an excellent writer. Everything he notes is set in the context of the landscape he travels through, and so we get sharply observant descriptions of the deep South, the desert Southwest, the lush California coast, the mountains of Oregon and the plains of Kansas wheat, Minnesota dairy farms and New England in the autumn. There's really too much to do justice to in a brief review. We're treated to quick but observant snapshot views of the character of major American cities in the early forties, the changing scenery along the highways that link them and the small towns, farms and roadside diners along the way. It's a priceless time capsule'not least because it shows a vanished America, one much closer to its pioneer roots than it is to anything in our twenty-first century.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-01 00:00:00 Jennifer Morgan Alistair Cooke, is the Brit who traded for American early in his career. From that point he became a keen observer of his adopted country. This is a "diary" of journeys taken as the USA enters into World War Two. As with all journeys, it is as much about time as it is about place. It didn't take more than 20-30 pages into the book for me to realize how well Cooke had nailed down this fleeting period of Americana. He is mostly careful to avoid generalizations but he is concious of two fateful things that have blessed his effort. One, he is in Washington, D.C., at the moment of great challenge when Pearl Harbor is bombed; and, two, he is uniquely positioned "on this side of the pond" to explain America and Americans to his British audience. He seizes the moment (and continues to do so for another 50+ years with his great series, Letter to America). He is aware of other foreigners who have attempted to take the measure of America, from de Toqueville on down, but he gets in his car and drives and writes his impressions. Is it "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?" Perhaps, in the sense that some elements of American character change slowly at best. But, that isn't the point of Cooke's observations. His fresh eye, his determination to take small bites, and his openness to his adopted country are all fundamental to this work. Sometimes a picture is better than 1000 words, and sometimes you need the words. Cooke is a wonderful example of the latter as he goes far in proving (to coin a phrase) "all America is local." This is the kind of history that needs to be read/discussed before college, yet the "civics" course that this book would most easily fit into is no longer part of the curriculum. Such a shame.