Customer Reviews

The American Home Front: 1941-1942

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3 star:		(6)
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Anybody who is a World War II buff should read this book. Cooke's writing style is refreshing. His observations are worth noting. Whether he is describing what the day was like on December 7th or casually chatting with soldiers on weekend leave at a cafe, you can appreciate his style. He puts his observations in context and does not bore the reader with endless details and minor observations. Reading this book gives you a true sense of the American people in the early years of the war. Also his observations on race and interaction with African Americans and Japanese internees is eye opening.

As one of countless Americans who remember Alistair Cooke as the voice of "Masterpiece Theatre" it's refreshing to know, professionally, from whence he came. His recollections (from his role as the BBC's originator of "Letter from America" and gathered in "The American Home Front") tell us of a younger Cooke in his quest to find out how Americans viewed the Second World War during its first year. His book is a masterpiece, indeed.

In early 1942, the author set out from Washington D.C. and headed south and west. Some months later he finished his journey in New York and what he witnessed on his trip around the United States is a reader's delight. I'm struck by one thing at first....our pictorial history of the Second World War is largely viewed through black and white photos and newsreels. Alistair Cooke's commentary immediately adds color. One suspects that Cooke had not even remotely traveled around America when he set off and his trip must have been awe-inspiring for this young British reporter who had recently become an American citizen. He speaks of the extreme poverty of the south and its basic, rural distance from the war but as he moves west he encounters oil in Texas, pleasant country in Arizona and a sudden self-immersion into war efforts as he reaches California.

Cooke proceeds north through Oregon and Washington, noting its beautiful, tall fir trees but also a disassociation by people of the northwest with their California cousins. He circles back east via Montana, Wyoming and Kansas and seems to be taken by the fertile fields of the American midwest. For these citizens the war is more remote, but no less significant. Cooke relates wonderful tidbits of information. Landlocked Iowa, for instance, sent more men to the U.S. Navy than any other state per capita. Along the way, he not only gives us his colorful snapshots of ordinary people going about their business in extraordinary times, but he also gives a unique gift of writing about the sounds and smells of each place. All of this done, mind you, without much more than a whiff of humor, addressed buttoned-up, English style.

How comparable are his findings of certain subjects with regard to today! Texans in 1942 speak bewilderingly about gas rationing when one interviewee talks of oil flowing as never before. Any reader wanting to be a little more enlightened about current Mexican immigration should read his passages with regard to such. Yet there are differences, too. He takes note of the solidly Democratic south and the rock-ribbed Republicans of Vermont. How some things change!

What makes this book so unusual is that I've never read anything like it before. Had it been chronicled by an American, certain prejudices would surely have been exposed. While Cooke keeps a jaundiced reporter's eye on his work as his trek continues, he nonetheless is fast becoming an American patriot, as witnessed in his "envoi" which completes the book.

"The American Home Front" is history told from a vantage point not found in schoolbooks and it is written as well by a supreme diarist. Although we know much more about how the war ended, Alistair Cooke's contribution is his descriptions of events and the feelings of Americans at the beginning of the war. He has done so in a magnificent way.

The CDs in the 11-disk audio book set do not have chapter names. Every CD is inexplicably divided into 99 tracks, each averaging about 45 seconds in length. If your listening is interrupted, it's a real chore to get back to where you were (even if you do remember what track you were listening to, you'll have to push your player's advance button over and over and over again to get to where you were). Of course it's also impossible to tell where one chapter ends and the next begins. This wouldn't have been so bad if the CD packaging had any index or track listing, but it doesn't even list chapter names. It really seems that this set was thrown together by someone who doesn't have any understanding of how people use audio books. That said, the content is very interesting, but the audiobook can be frustrating at times.

Imagine digging through the closet of a famous writer and discovering an unpublished manuscript from the early 1940s -- a masterwork of thoughtful journalism and human insight that captures the very essence of American life during World War II.

That's the true story behind this astounding work of "man-on-the-street" reporting from Alistair Cooke, who traveled throughout the country in the months following Pearl Harbor to discover how ordinary Americans were responding to the global crisis. My father was just 16 when we entered the war (he joined the Army in 1943). For years I've wondered what it was like to be alive at that moment in history. Thank God someone had the courage to publish this lost treasure!

Cooke sets out on his journey from Washington, D.C., and immediately encounters the "real America" of the heartland -- far beyond the power-hungry halls of government and the burgeoning bureaucracy of wartime mobilization. We meet shy teenage girls at a soda fountain in Kentucky. We encounter desperate unemployed men traveling hundreds of miles to work at a munitions plant in southern Indiana. We see a pregnant woman hitchhiking home to give birth. From the deserts of the Southwest to the factories of Detroit, Cooke gives us an insider's look at what people were really experiencing. No cliches -- just good reporting. If you love American history, you won't want to miss this little gem.

One closing note: In the early chapters of this book, Cooke offers a few harsh criticisms for other journalists writing at the time -- the kind of people who decide in advance what the "story" is all about and then go find a few quotes to prove their point. (Sound familiar?) We could use a lot more of Cooke's honest approach in today's media.

Anyone who knows Alistair Cooke from the old Masterpiece Theater introductions or who is interested in the WWII era will enjoy this travelogue/memoir. With a newspaperman's eye and an outsider's point of view, he gives a wonderfully detailed and quirky account of his trip across America.

I was a small child during WWII, growing up near the place Mr. Cooke described as "five miles of airplanes," just below Macon, Ga. Troop trains rolled through our little town on the way to Jacksonville. My grandmother ran a mess hall at what is now known as Warner Robbins Air Force Base. She invited soldiers to our home for holiday meals. My father was too old for service, but was an air raid warden and volunteer fire fighter. My parents didn't miss a news broadcast if they could help it. Still, all of this was just "wallpaper" for a child. In reading Mr. Cooke's book I was vividly placed in the time in which I was born. The grownup talk (Henry Kaiser, Roosevelt's cabinet, Edward R. Murrow, etc.) I had heard came into focus. I could see the country as a whole. Also, I have a deep appreciation of the clarity and professionalism of Mr. Cooke's journalistic talents. This book is a gift.

Alistair Cooke is best known in the United States a television personality, the host of 'Masterpiece Theatre' and the BBC series 'America.' This newly published book turns out to actually be the first book he ever wrote. Actually he was a journalist, living in America he reported on America to the BBC.

Just after Pearl Harbor he began a trip around the country. Leaving Washington, DC he went to Florida. He crossed the southern part of the country following about the route taken by I-10 to San Diego. Then to Seattle and back to Maine before returning to Washington. With a reporters eye he records what was going on as America turned from peace to war.

To me the strength of this book lies in two areas: First he saw America through the eyes of one raised in England. Second he wrote this book at the time (finishing it in 1945). But by then people didn't want to read more books about gloom and war. So the book was rejected by his publisher and sat in a desk until now.

The book is every bit a masterpiece.

Alistair Cooke's writing in this journal is wonderful. I am familiar with many of the places he writes about and was fascinated to have a picture of them at another time - before I was born. Also, the civilian build-up to World War II was interesting to read about. I've never read about the differences in various parts of the US. I know that US industry did a super job at revving up the factories to produce much more than before, but it's explicitly revealed in this book. Mostly, I just enjoyed his great prose style!

I can't quite pin down why I didn't like this book more than I did. I suppose it's because Cooke seems to have been caught between writing a travelogue and composing vignettes (a la "Letters from America") about the country he saw as he traveled about during the years in question. The resulting book never really engaged this reader as coherent work to be enjoyed as a whole. I wonder if this may have played a role in his decision to never pursue getting it published during his lifetime.

To be sure, there's no mistaking Cooke's gifts for observation and making the pungent or amusing aside. His attention to matters of racial discrimination, his tracking of the impact--or lack thereof--of the incipient war on daily life as he progresses, and his snapshop portraits of his various stops along the way, for example, all bring the world to life and help add color to our mental portrait of that time (assuming, of course, you weren't alive then, or don't study American cultural/social history).

But the work seems rather lifeless somehow. Maybe I've just grown too accustomed to the more personalized travel writing of Bill Bryson or something like Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley," but while I feel like I came away with some useful and interesting information, I don't feel like I'll ever really be compelled to pick it up again as a pleasure read. This is certainly edifying--never a bad reason to pick up a book--but I'd look elsewhere if you want entertainment, too.

This narrative of the homefront in WW II would be difficult to surpass. Very readable, I was nine years old in 1942 and this volume brought out a multitude of memories. It brings out the sacrifices of every day citizens and the transformation of the nation to wartime. Cooke was a tireless reporter and observer par excellence, this is a lucid expostion of the times.