The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II Review

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The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II ReviewAnyone interested in the history of the east side of the San Francisco Bay during the 20th century will enjoy this book. Johnson employs a social historian's approach to explain what happened to the Richmond and Oakland from 1941 to 1945 and how the war years affected the Midwesterners and Southerners (and others) that came to the Bay Area and the natives that they encountered. The book successfully portrays aspects of Bay Area history such as huge shipyards, temporary war housing and rowdy downtown night-life that, for the most part, are no longer visible. Johnson also outlines some of the political movements that developed during the WWII years and how they affected post-war Oakland and Richmond. Johnson's discussion of the politics of the late `40s and early `50s is informative and interesting but also brief; this may somewhat frustrate anyone interested in the political history of the region. Overall, this is an informative, well-written book.The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II OverviewMore than any event in the twentieth century, World War II marked the coming of age of America's West Coast cities. Almost overnight, new war industries prompted the mass urban migration and development that would trigger lasting social, cultural, and political changes. For the San Francisco Bay Area, argues Marilynn Johnson, the changes brought by World War II were as dramatic as those brought by the gold rush a century earlier.Focusing on Oakland, Richmond, and other East Bay shipyard boomtowns, Johnson chronicles the defense buildup, labor migration from the South and Midwest, housing issues, and social and racial conflicts that pitted newcomers against longtime Bay Area residents. She follows this story into the postwar era, when struggles over employment, housing, and civil rights shaped the urban political landscape for the 1950s and beyond. She also traces the cultural legacy of war migration and shows how Southern religion and music became an integral part of Bay Area culture.Johnson's sources are wide-ranging and include shipyard records, labor histories, police reports, and interviews. Her findings place the war's human drama at center stage and effectively recreate the texture of daily life in workplace, home, and community. Enriched by the photographs of Dorothea Lange and others, The Second Gold Rush makes an important contribution to twentieth-century urban studies as well as to California history.

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Don't You Know There's a War On? The American Home Front, 1941-1945 Review

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Don't You Know There's a War On The American Home Front, 1941-1945 ReviewI bought this book hoping to flesh out some of my knowledge of WWII with some more information about the war at home. I had high expectations of this book and was reading with great interest, until astonishingly obvious errors jumped out at me. Errors which indicated that the writer was either very sloppy in his fact checking, or relying on hearsay evidence, or just making things up as he went along.
Examples: He writes, "whether a pilot was flying B-17's in Europe, or B-19's in the South Pacific..." There was no B-19 bomber in WWII, the only one made was a prototype by Douglas Aviation, but none were ever used. I can't imagine such a glaring mistake, when all the aircraft of WWII were so well documented.
Another: "...many acts in New York's nightclubs were earning top dollar...Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis earned twice the salary for their act as before the war..." Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis didn't start working together until 1946, well after the end of WWII.
Another: "... Doolittle's Raiders struck back at Japan with a squadron of B-24's" Jimmy Doolittle flew B-25 bombers, which were medium bombers, two engines apiece, that were the largest aircraft to have ever taken off from an aircraft carrier. B-24's are huge 4 engine bombers, far too big to have taken off from an aircraft carrier. And the B-25 is universally known to WWII buffs as the plane that Doolittle flew. Anyone who lived thru WWII with any attention paid to the war would no sooner make this mistake than to say that it was President Nixon who ordered the atomic bomb dropped instead of President Truman.Don't You Know There's a War On The American Home Front, 1941-1945 OverviewThe tragic events of September 11, 2001 brought to the surface memories of an earlier time of unprecedented national emergency-Pearl Harbor-and America's subsequent involvement in World War II. In this evocative cultural history, Richard Lingeman re-creates the events-historic, humorous, and tragic-and personalities of the American home front. From V-girls and V-mail, blackouts and the internment of the Japanese, to new opportunities for African-Americans and women, Lingeman recaptures a unique time in American history in this New York Times Notable Book.

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Defying Hitler: A Memoir Review

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Defying Hitler: A Memoir ReviewThe title of my review is a paraphrase of Haffner's description of Hitler's sinister accomplishment. He certainly doesn't pull any punches, and is unsparing on the moral failings of his fellow Germans in the early 1930s. This book was written in 1939, shortly after the author's escape to England. Although Haffner became a distinguished journalist and historian, he never published this book during his lifetime; it was discovered by his son and published after the author's death at the age of 91. Perhaps, like many war veterans, the experiences tangled up with the manuscript were so painful and so personal that the author couldn't bear to revisit them (a chapter was published on the 50th anniversary of an event that it describes).
What Haffner--and his son, who is the assured and elegant translator--have given us is one of the most compelling and insightful descriptions of the period that has been written. It can only be compared to the diary of Otto Klemperer as a revelatory description of how a nation of people, not so different from other nations at the time or indeed of any nation today, could descend into barbarism and criminality on the vast scale of the Third Reich.
From the opening sentence the 1920s and 30s in Germany is evoked: "This is the story of a duel." Specialists will be aware of the importance of actual duelling in middle and upper class German society as late at WWI, and its endurance as a symbol thereafter, and with this characterisation of his personal struggle against the Nazi State, Haffner seductively invites his reader into the authentic atmosphere of the period.
Scholars who have thought deeply about the Nazi period recognise it as the final culminating phase of a second Thirty Year's War that began in 1914; indeed, Haffner's explanation for the Nazi catastrophe is based upon his view that the generation who grew up during WWI, NOT the soldiers but the children who experienced the excitement but not the misery and death, were the key constituency for the Nazis.
Haffner's use of generational analysis is a powerful conceptual tool that is much more understood and accepted these days--Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation", however correct or incorrect it may be, has been a huge best seller--and Haffner in 1939 stumbled upon this type of analysis as he sought to describe how Hitler had come to power.
"Defying Hitler" is also the intense, personal description of the crisis that Haffner and his family and friends underwent during the rise of Hitler, conveyed with the power of a novelist. Haffner succeeds in humanising the Germans he knew and lived among without ever downplaying the horror of the decisions that they made, as he shows that it was all too clear what the consequences of those decisions were likely to be.
This is a unique book and it is highly recommended for both readers who have read almost nothing about the period, as well as readers who are thoroughly familiar with the subject, and yet are still trying to come to terms with how such a terrible catastrophe could occur in a civilised nation.Defying Hitler: A Memoir Overview

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Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour Review

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Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour ReviewIt is with no small amount of irony that the words Thomas Paine used to rail against a Britain who had an "army to enforce her tyranny" so aptly describes the aura captured in Lynne Olson's "Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood With Britain in its Darkest, Finest, Hour." But it is must be no coincidence to Ms. Olson that those few U.S. citizens who did stand with Britain during the dark days of the fall of France, the 57 consecutive nights of the bombing of London (and cities throughout the UK) from September 7, 1940 through May 10, 1941, and the evisceration of British merchant shipping by U-Boats in the North Atlantic richly deserve Paine's view that those "that stand by it now, deserve[s] the love and thanks of man and woman."
In Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England, Olson told the story of the small group of Conservative MPs who opposed Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward Hitler's Germany from the mid-1930s until Churchill's accession to power. Olson's focus on a small group of relative unknowns (at least as far as an American audience is concerned) provided a valuable perspective of the era of appeasement and the premiership of Neville Chamberlain. Similarly, in "Citizens of London", Olson focuses on a small group of U.S. citizens resident in the U.K. who saw earlier than their compatriots that Britain's battle would soon be their own and who found it within themselves to do everything possible to aid a nation on the brink of starvation and despair. In so doing she provides valuable perspective on U.S.-British relations which are often cast(like the policy of appeasement) in the most superficial way.
The three `Yank' citizens were Averell Harriman, Edward R. Murrow, and John Gilbert Winant. Of the three, Harriman and Murrow's stories were known to me. Harriman, a child of wealth and privilege, was by all-accounts up to his time in the U.K. something of a cavalier playboy. He wasn't known for his substance at all but did manage to secure the position as the director of the U.S. lend-lease program in England. Murrow rose from relatively lowly beginnings to become the man whose radio broadcasts during the Blitz helped transform U.S. popular opinion from its isolationist base and in so doing created a remarkable news organization. Gilbert's story was unknown to me. A prep-school and Princeton graduate Gilbert succeeded Joe Kennedy as U.S. ambassador to England. Taken together the lives of these three men and the story of how their time in London resulted in the substantial transformation of their lives as well as the lives of the peoples they shared a war with constitute a pretty remarkable story.
Olson's book works admirably well. Although impeccably researched it remains an easily-read and digested work of history. I think the strongest aspect of the book is the fact that despite its rather heroic title this is no hagiographic treatment of three men on a white horse coming to rescues a helpless nation. Similarly, Olson's treatment of the overriding relationship between the U.S. and Britain is not cast in the light of the firm and eternal `special relationship' in which there was no tension or conflict. The relationship was no easy thing and Olson discusses the flaws and troubles that flowed from that relationship with a critical, even-handed eye.
On the (slightly) negative side I think there is some small loss of focus in the latter third of the book. The story of three men `standing with Britain' gets a bit swallowed up once the U.S. enters the war and millions of men and tons of materiel begin to flood Britain. Needless to say I think that diffusion reflects accurately what happened but the respect and admiration that these men obtained (particularly Winant) did endure. Despite that the book holds up throughout and by the time I was finished I felt I had gained a fuller understanding of the times that tried Britain's soul.
If I had to pick one aspect of the book that will stay with me the longest though it will not be that of the big picture painted by Olson. Rather, it will be of the portrait of the one man, John Gilbert Winant, whose story was totally unknown to me. His story astonished me and moved me as his life played out in the book and I was saddened by the fact that his story seems to have faded from our collective consciousness. For that alone (although there are other reasons to be sure) I hope this book is read and enjoyed by a broad audience. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig
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The Greatest Generation Review

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The Greatest Generation ReviewI bought this book for my children. I am so thankful that someone told this story. This Greatest Generation is slowly slipping away. I am a baby boomer and my father [their grandfather] was an Italian immigrant. He was very aware of the freedom he enjoyed in this country and was willing to fight against the tyrrany of a very sick dictator! Their other grandfather fought at Pearl Harbor. Their future wives worked hard here at home for the war effort. Both men thankfully survived to go on and help rebuild this country where their families could grow up safely and with more opportunities than they knew. These dear family members have now passed on. I wanted my children to understand what their grandparents endured and to be very proud of the unselfishness of that Greatest Generation. They didn't have state-of-the-art everything, but they had loyalty, integrity, determination and grit that far overshadowed any doubts or fears. Their example of selflessness was an honorable trait. We should all strive to emulate their noble character.The Greatest Generation Overview

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