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Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945

AUTHOR Kennedy, David M.
PUBLISHER Oxford University Press (04/19/2001)
PRODUCT TYPE Paperback (Paperback)

Description
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).

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Product Format
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9780195144031
ISBN-10: 0195144031
Binding: Paperback or Softback (Trade Paperback (Us))
Content Language: English
More Product Details
Page Count: 936
Carton Quantity: 6
Product Dimensions: 6.20 x 2.40 x 9.20 inches
Weight: 3.10 pound(s)
Feature Codes: Bibliography, Index, Price on Product, Maps, Table of Contents, Ikids, Illustrated
Country of Origin: JP
Subject Information
BISAC Categories
History | United States - 20th Century
History | Wars & Conflicts - World War II - General
Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 0
Point Value: 0
Guided Reading Level: Not Applicable
Dewey Decimal: 973.91
Library of Congress Control Number: 98049580
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
publisher marketing
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).

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Author: Kennedy, David M.
David M. Kennedy received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Emeritus and co-director of The Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West at Stanford University. His first book, BIRTH CONTROL IN AMERICA: THE CAREER OF MARGARET SANGER, was honored with both the Bancroft Prize and the John Gilmary Shea Prize. He has won numerous teaching awards at Stanford, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in American political, diplomatic, intellectual, and social history, and in American literature. Dr. Kennedy published a volume in the OXFORD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FREEDOM FROM FEAR: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN DEPRESSION AND WAR, 1929--1945, for which he was honored with the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and he served from 2002--2011 on the board of the Pulitzer Prizes.
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Paperback