Keep from All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II - Hardcover

Lacey, James G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591144914 ISBN 13: 9781591144915

Publisher: Naval Institute Press, 2011

Synopsis

Keep from All Thoughtful Men overturns much accepted historical dogma on how World War II strategy was planned and implemented. It is taken for granted that the Axis powers were defeated by an avalanche of munitions that poured forth from pitiless American factories. So it is amazing that the story of how this "miracle of production" was organized and integrated into Allied strategy and operations remains untold.

Keep from All Thoughtful Men is the first book that tells how revolutions in both statistics and finance changed forever the nature of war. While the book relates the overall story of how economics dictated war planning at the highest levels, more specifically it tells how three obscure economists came to have more influence on the conduct of World War II than the Joint Chiefs. Because military historians rarely understand economics and economic historians just as rarely involve themselves with the details of war, there has never been a military history that shows how economics influenced the planning of strategy and the conduct of any war. This is sadly true of even World War II, which has been called by Paul Samuelson, "The Economist's War."

About this title

About the Author

Jim Lacey, a retired U.S. Army Infantry officer with a Ph.D. from Leeds University in Great Britain, is a defense analyst and writer based in the Washington, DC area. He is the author of several books on military history, terrorism, and current affairs, including Takedown: The 3rd Infantry Division's Twenty-One Day Assault on Baghdad and a biography of General Pershing, among others.

Review

Much has been written about America s role in the Second World War and about the Second Front which was at the center of the story. Jim Lacey has turned the world upside down. Now for the first time we can see what really happened and why. This is a path-breaking book. --JOHN GOOCH, Emeritus Professor, University of Leeds, coauthor of Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War

Jim Lacey tells how a few obscure American economists guided the miracle of production that crushed the Axis. In 1940-1943 all-outer military chiefs and Roosevelt himself badly misjudged American capacities of labor, materials and finance. Their jumbled arms programs were out of touch with reality. Lacey persuasively describes how the economists, applying then-new statistical measure like gross national product, convinced them to recalibrate output to credible goals that assured a timely victory. --EDWARD S. MILLER, author of Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor

Quite simply Jim Lacey has overturned nearly 60 years of sloppy work by historians. This book represents a crucial contribution to our understanding of how the United States actually developed the mobilization plan that led to victory in the Second World War. It is undoubtedly one of the most important books to appear on the war in a decade. --WILLIAMSON MURRAY, author of A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War

Keep From All Thoughtful Men is a work of scholarship... Nonetheless, I was surprised to discover the book was not a daunting read. Readers interested in America s WWII home-front history may want a copy of Lacey s work for their shelves. Comparing some of its conclusions to much of what has been printed on the subject of America converting itself into the Arsenal of Democracy is useful. And what Keep From All Thoughtful Men adds to what we already know about America s weak military position in the first days of the war makes the story a little more hair-raising. --America in WWII, August 2011

Jim Lacey tells how a few obscure American economists guided the miracle of production that crushed the Axis. In 1940-1943 all-outer military chiefs and Roosevelt himself badly misjudged American capacities of labor, materials and finance. Their jumbled arms programs were out of touch with reality. Lacey persuasively describes how the economists, applying then-new statistical measure like gross national product, convinced them to recalibrate output to credible goals that assured a timely victory. --EDWARD S. MILLER, author of Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor

Quite simply Jim Lacey has overturned nearly 60 years of sloppy work by historians. This book represents a crucial contribution to our understanding of how the United States actually developed the mobilization plan that led to victory in the Second World War. It is undoubtedly one of the most important books to appear on the war in a decade. --WILLIAMSON MURRAY, author of A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War

About this edition

• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1591144914
• ISBN 13: 9781591144915
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288