Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States) - Hardcover

Kennedy, David M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195038347 ISBN 13: 9780195038347

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This book tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.

The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike.

Freedom From Fear explores how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could.

Both comprehensive and colorful, this account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War, reveals a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed.

The Oxford History of the United States

The Atlantic Monthly has praised The Oxford History of the United States as "the most distinguished series in American historical scholarship," a series that "synthesizes a generation's worth of historical inquiry and knowledge into one literally state-of-the-art book. Who touches these books touches a profession."
Conceived under the general editorship of one of the leading American historians of our time, C. Vann Woodward, The Oxford History of the United States blends social, political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military history into coherent and vividly written narrative. Previous volumes are Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution; James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (which won a Pulitzer Prize and was a New York Times Best Seller); and James T. Patterson's Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974 (which won a Bancroft Prize).

About this title

About the Author

David M. Kennedy is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. He is the author of Over Here: The First World War and American Society, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, which won a Bancroft Prize. He lives in Stanford, California.

Reviews

The latest volume of the Oxford History of the United States, an exhaustive survey spanning 16 years of crises, ordeals, fears, and insecurities. Kennedy (History/Stanford Univ.; Over Here: The First World War and American Society, 1980) writes of post-WWI disillusionment, the collapse of farm prices that had been driven higher by the war, and the great movement of rural people to the cities. President Hoover, the laissez-faire whipping boy of the Great Depression, emerges here as a well-intentioned workaholic who tried valiantly with many plans and experiments, despite some faulty philosophy, to bring his country out of the economic free fall that resulted from the effects of the Treaty of Versailles (huge and ruinous war reparations imposed on Germany, record tariffs that severely damaged international trade), a gold standard that restricted the money supply, and an unregulated, speculative stock market that fed on excess credit and caused widespread bank failures and massive unemployment. Kennedy describes the great fear paralyzing the country when FDR came to power. The flood of New Deal legislation attempted to use the government to build social and economic security for its citizens. It didnt end the Depression, but it did create permanent monuments in American life, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and banking and stock market reforms. Full economic recovery followed the US entrance into WWII, from which a newly prosperous, confident America emerged, despite the loss of more than 400,000 lives. The author does well in selecting salient events and colorful, representative details to illuminate this critical period in the American Century. A major achievement in objective historical writing that should be a legacy to generations of students seeking authoritative reference material on the period. (First printing of 50,000; first serial to the Atlantic Monthly; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

One of our most broad-gauged American historians brings us that increasing rarity: a big book about a big subject. In a compelling narrative...the Stanford scholar takes on the job of tracing the American people through three of the most important and widely written-about epochs in the century-the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II-and provides us with consistently original and sometimes startling conclusions.

Rarely does a work of historical synthesis combine such trenchant analysis and elegant writing. Because of its scope, insight, and purring narrative engine, Kennedy's book will stand for years as the definitive history of the critical decades of the American century.

With this history of the Depression, New Deal, and World War II, Stanford University's Kennedy becomes the latest contributor to Oxford's distinguished series on U.S. history. Kennedy has a distinguished record of his own, with two acclaimed books, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (LJ 8/70) and Over Here: The First World War and American Society (LJ 10/1/80). Displaying a literary craft uncommon in survey works, he has woven together narrative, sketches of character, and critical judgment to record and analyze the economic, political, social, and military events of these epic years. Readers who feel they live in an era of tumultuous change might well consult Kennedy's book. This account of the crucial struggles and events of the Depression and war years will lend perspective like few others. For all libraries.ARobert F. Nardini, North Chichester, NH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195038347
• ISBN 13: 9780195038347
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 960