Customer Reviews

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

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I 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.

I was born in 1945, just a few months before the end of WWII. I grew up with the stories of shared sacrifice, rationing, war bond drives, and Rosie the Riveter (who was my mother -- well, not literally, but she did work in a defense plant).
This book is an amazing look at the home front during The War (and we always heard it with the Capital Letters). I've read it twice and my mother read it three times before her death; I have her word for it that it is all true.
Dennis Mansker
www.dennismansker.com
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This book is about American society and culture during World War 2. It discusses many different aspects of civilian America, such as the musical tastes of the public, what people were reading, movies, work, business, and housing among other things.

It is quite a good, informative book, and the author presents his subject in an interesting, occasionally funny manner. If there is any criticism of this book it is the fairly abrupt beginning and ending.