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

9781560254652

1560254653

The 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 and social history, Richard Lingeman, an acclaimed biographer of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, recreates the events -- historic, humorous, and tragic -- and personalities of the American home front during World War II. An ideal companion to Studs Terkel's The Good War and Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, Don't You Know There's a War On? evokes the manners, morals, and trends of a unique time in American history, when the country was united to defeat the real Axis. It was a time of partings and loneliness, tragedy and triumph, blue stars and gold star moms, when V stood for Victory, Home Front USA was the Arsenal of Democracy, and prosperity turned the corner. It was a time of meat shortages and gas rationing, Buy War Bonds, save tin cans and kitchen grease; of race riots and zoot suits, Washington alphabet agencies, overcrowded war-boom towns, "V girls" and bobby soxers; women manning machines, hepcats dancing to big band music and pop songs that crooned, "Remember Pearl Harbor," "I'll Be Seeing You" and "Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week." Book jacket.