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

David M. Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0965086895 | ISBN-13: 978-0195038347 | Edition: 1

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).

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

You can think of Freedom from Fear as the academic's version of The Greatest Generation: like Tom Brokaw, Stanford history professor David M. Kennedy focuses on the years of the Great Depression and the Second World War and how the American people coped with those events. But there the similarities end--and, in terms of the differences, one might begin by noting that the historian's account is over twice the size of the journalist's.

Whereas Brokaw made use of extensive interviews, Kennedy relies on published accounts and primary sources, all meticulously footnoted. This academic rigor, however, does not render the book dull--far from it. Certainly the subject matter is interesting enough in its own right, but Kennedy offers attention-grabbing turns of phrase on nearly every page. He also unleashes some convention-shattering theses, such as his revelation that "the most responsible students of the events of 1929 have been unable to demonstrate an appreciable cause-and-effect linkage between the Crash and the Depression" and his subsequent argument that, although it made order out of chaos, the New Deal did not reverse the Depression--that, he says, was the war's doing. All in all, Freedom from Fear compares favorably to its companions in the multivolume Oxford History of the United States in both its comprehensive heft and its vivid readability. --Ron Hogan

From Publishers Weekly

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 990 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (May 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965086895
• ISBN-13: 978-0195038347
• ASIN: 0195038347
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 2.4 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (126 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #126,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David M. Kennedy is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University and co-director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. After C. Vann Woodward's death, he was appointed series editor for the Oxford History of the United States series. His volume in the series, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Ambassador's Prize, and the California Gold Medal for Literature. He is the author of Over Here: The First World War and American Society, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, which won a Bancroft Prize. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

161 of 170 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An enthralling book that makes history come alive! July 22, 1999

By Lawrence Auerbach

Format:Hardcover

David Kennedy's book, "Freedom From Fear" is a monumental achievement of historical writing.

Covering the years from just before outbreak The Great Depression to the end of World War II and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the author focuses on the impact which Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had on America during this seminal period of our history, and how his influence still impacts on our country today.

"Freedom From Fear" is an extremely long book--over 900 pages in length--and the early chapters, detailing various aspects of The "New Deal" and the many agencies under the "New Deal" which F.D.R. helped establish, are a bit too detailed and not quite as interesting as the rest of the book. But none of the wealth of information which Kennedy gives is dull or uninteresting--and when Kennedy starts to write about the events that occurred in Europe and the Pacific during World WarII, his book becomes as enthralling as any novel.

A previous Amazon Reviewer faults Kennedy for being anti-Rosevelt and says that Kennedy feels "nothing Roosevelt did seems right." I wonder if we have read the same book! Kennedy is an obvious admirer of F.D.R. and does not hesitate to point out his many accomplishments and praise his ability as a politician and "visionary" in helping to draw so many conflicting elements in Congress and the country as a whole, together.

Kennedy DOES point out that Roosevelt kept many of his thoughts and motives to himself--and that even his closest friends didn't know always exactly what he was THINKING. But the fact remains that F.D.R. accomplished wonders in drawing our country together and restoring a "Faith in ourselves" as a nation, that was woefully lacking until he became president. Kennedy gives more than ample credit to Rosevelt's accomplishments, and is an impartial enough as a historian to also mention his weaknesses and faults. Fortunately for our country, his accomplishments far outweigh his weaknesses!

A further observation about this book, which I think should attract a wide readership and make his book appealing to all organization is superb! His writing is extremely clear and free of "pedanticism." His chapters, describing the various battles fought during World War II (i.e. The Battle of Midway; Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, etc.), are as riveting as any novel.Written as a historian, Kennedy still has a novelist's flair for bringing what he writes about to life on the printed page. The "facts" he presents are totally free from "colorization"--but the WAY he presents them is dramatic and thoroughly engrossing.

One of the most appealing aspects of his book is his "organization" of material. His accounts of the personalities of many of the world leaders described in his book are seemlessly interspersed with the history he is describing. His "profiles" of various leaders are gems of cogent brevity.

"Freedom From Fear" is historical writing at its best--detailed, always interesting--and dramatic in in impact. It amply deserves to win a Pulitzer Prize--which I hope it does!

Larry Auerbach, Las Vegas, NV

115 of 131 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Grand, but ultimately disappointing April 12, 2001

By Ross Hardter

Format:Hardcover

After looking at all the extremely positive views of Freedom From Fear, it is with some trepidation that I offer some negative comments. This is a book that I really looked forward to reading and wanted very much to like. On the positive side, I must state that I learned a great deal, particularly about the depression, that I did not know. And I also certainly admire Dr. Kennedy for tackling such a massive project and condensing the results into a single volume. But therein, I think, lay the seeds of some of the difficulties. Specifically, I have three problems with it.

First, because he is trying to cover so much, the book ends up being just a broad survey and, of necessity, omits too much, and places too much reliance on secondary sources. This is probably inevitable considering the scope of the project and the vast literature available. Each chapter covers a particular theme, which makes the book look like a series of lectures or articles, rather than a unified whole.

Second, the book badly needed a good editing before publication. There are two problems here. The first is that stories are repeated, almost verbatim, in different chapters, and occasionally even within a single chapter. The second is that, in the areas with which I am familiar, I found numerous factual errors. To cite just three, at the battle of the Philippine Sea it was not Raymond Spruance, commander of the Fifth Fleet, who ordered the lights turned on for the returning aircraft, but Marc Mitscher, commander of the carrier groups. Again, it was not Thomas Kinkaid, commander of the Seventh Fleet, who "crossed the T" at Surigao Strait, but rather Jesse Oldendorf, who commanded the battleships and other fire support ships. But my favorite is the photo caption which refers to the horizontal stabilizer in the tail assembly of a B-17 as its "rear wing". If I'm able to spot these errors in areas with which I'm familiar, it makes me wonder about how many there may be in areas with which I'm not familiar.

My last criticism is the most important, and that deals with the tone of the book. As a couple of reviewers have mentioned, the author is negative about nearly everyone in the cast of characters, most especially about Roosevelt and Churchill. (Among the exceptions are Truman (who comes in only at the very end), Hopkins, and, most peculiarly, Stalin.) I suspect the problem may be that Dr. Kennedy is just too far removed from the events he describes. Everyone knew that Roosevelt and Churchill had faults and made mistakes. But they have to be viewed in the true context in which they lived and operated. They were both heroic figures who did the best they could in situations that few have ever experienced or could handle. ...

50 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Magisterial & Authoratative Look At The Crisis Years! July 30, 2000

By Barron Laycock HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

With this wonderful book, David Kennedy has produced a definitive treatment of the crisis of the century, a book of epic proportions; one detailing, describing and explaining the many ways in which the insoluble social, economic, and political maelstrom that enveloped this country is related to the history of what came thereafter. As in other recent tomes such as Doris Kearns Goodwin's "No Ordinary Times" and Tom Brokow's The Greatest Generation", the present volume is quite explicit in meaningfully linking how the harrowing kinds of experiences, trials, and tribulations of the American people helped to forge the kind of character, determination, and resolve that was later so instrumental in meeting the challenges associated with the Second World War.

Yet unlike Brokow's effort and that of other historians like Stephen Ambrose, Kennedy avoids wide use of primary interviewing, and the difference this leads to in the tone and perspective of the book is telling. Like Goodwin's effort, this is a superb book, wonderfully written, eminently accessible (an important quality given its length of nearly 900 pages), with a sometimes soaring prose style that is so distinctive and so refreshing that reading it is a joy. This is history come to life, full of the color and hues of the original events, presented in a manner that is at once both academically sophisticated and yet available and readable by the general audience. Kennedy makes the reader feel as though he is present in the moment, experiencing the events as they transpire rather than eavesdropping some seventy or so years after the fact. Hearing about the ways in which feckless Herbert Hoover, for example, was in many ways the helpless victim of circumstances is quite interesting.

So is his take on so many other personalities and issues of the time, from the particulars of the New Deal and how they were conceived all the way to the insidious domestic treatment and 'internment' of Japanese Americans after the outbreak of WWII. Of course, Kennedy's book is rife with interesting and often provocative interpretations of the events, and this willingness to weigh in intelligently and convincingly adds to the overall entertainment and intellectual value of the book. While I didn't necessarily agree with all of these interpretations or his conclusions, it is always a pleasure to be in the presence of such an active, nimble and creative intellect. This is a book that anyone with an interest in the literally endless ways we were formed in the crucible of events of the past as well as by the people who came before us will want to experience this absolutely top-shelf new work by David Kennedy. Enjoy!