I was intrigued by the title and author of this book, I was initially disappointed when he spent the first half of the book east of the Mississippi, I'd wanted to know about the state of the roads at that time but Cooke spent time telling stories about what people were doing to gear up for the second world war.
It wasn't a book I looked forward to reading, He spent little time on topics I wanted to read about, As books that I had previously ordered to read became available, I got distracted and I never felt like picking up this book again, I think I'm permanently distracted now, Perhaps later, I'll pick this book up again, but I'm not anxious to finish this book now, I feel a little bad about the rating, but I'm just not the reader for this one, When we think about the study of war, we generally confine our study to the battles that were fought, Sometimes we look into the biographies of the generals or the development of the weapons, Television has increased our capabilities by rendering in video reality what was once confined to dusty pages or rambling reminiscences by grizzled veterans, The video histories of Ken Burns and the movies like Saving Private Ryan, as well as the TV series like Band of Brothers and Combat, have shown what war was like for the soldiers, but few things have given us an understanding of what war meant for the ordinary citizen or society as a whole.
This is exactly where Alistair Cooke's book fits into our understanding,
The book recounts a crosscountry trip that Cooke made as a young reporter in the years, Given wartime restrictions, it was an amazing journey and would still be so today, With keen insight, he describes the different regions of the country on several levels, He writes of geography, flora, fauna, and more importantly of people's attitudes, Written some sixty years ago and then lost until shortly before his death, the book is a snapshot in time, In our supposedly more enlightened and politically correct times, he would probably not have written in the way he did, He writes with honesty about racial attitudes against blacks, the Japanese, Jews, Filipinos, Mexicans, and the American Indian which we would now call indigenous peoples, One does not get the impression that he holds these attitudes himself, but he is simply reporting what he saw and heard in the language in which it came,
It seems to me that the America that Cooke discovered is not so different from the America of today, There are people willing to sacrifice for the greater good there are people who make the sacrifice while complaining about it, and there are people who resent having any limits put upon their mode of living.
If one were to recreate Cooke's journey, there would be differences to be found, but I think the similarities would be much greater, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a more complete picture of America during the Second World War,
I did not finish this book or get very far, I think it would have been an interesting story but Id get
bored reading to find the good parts, An interesting exploration of the US during the opening days of the war, and a fascinating discussion of the differences between seeing the forest vs, the trees when you're an on the ground reporter in an enormous country,
I stretched my reading out over almost two weeks, and I'm glad I did, There's not really an overarching argument here, more of a close up examination of a time and different places, Since there's no argument to carry the book, I found I enjoyed it more when reading small pieces, It is fascinating, but if I read too much in a sitting, I found the details began to run together, We are loising people who were in WWII to time, And so loosing what it was like then for the soldiers, for the ordinary people and for the country, But wait! Here is one of theth centuries finest writers and reporters traveling across the country to report on what was happening in, This is priceless! As it happens, my parents drove from Chicago to California inand I was along, but I probably slept most of the way as I was quite little.
But this book reveals a bit about what it was like then, this country of mine,
Plus, we Americans need to know that there was a time when we ALL were expected to PAY for the war we want and support, And in WWII people paid withshortages, sacrafice, rationing, rules, regulations and we bought war bonds, all to make sure we won, This book was not what I expected rather than highlighting American patriotism during WWII, Cooke takes an aroundtheU, S. car/train trip and describes extensively the impact of America's entry into the war on domestic manufacturing, labor, housing, landscape, politics, etc, and very little on how the Americans felt about their sons/brothers/fathers fighting overseas, It is a fascinating read, particularly the foreshadowing of the U, S. militaryindustrial complex, our dependence on processed foods, housing issues in major cities, labor migration, and so many other topics, I loved the parts where Cooke sounds like a travel guide, and his descriptions of many parts of the country, the Northwest in particular, made me want to visit
in the future.
The odd grammatical style is the only element that kept this from five the book is loaded with sentence fragments, and seems to have been written before the invention of the semicolon.
. . I found the pace wonky, and frequently had to reread sentences to get what Cooke was saying, But overall, this was a very pleasant surprise, I reread this book because of the challenging times the country is going through today and my suspicion of the selfaggrandizing "we all helped each other through this" nonsense that will surely be read a half century from now.
It's wonderful to get a fresh, noBS picture of how this country really works in a crisis rather than the "Greatest Generation", everyonewasapatriotandbehindthewar nonsense that you see and hear from most sources.
From women getting quickie marriages to soldiers heading to dangerous assignments in hope of getting benefits to farmers complaining that people going off to help in a war effort to help "those people" to propagandists and war profiteers Cooke covers it all.
A mustread for anyone interested in the realth century history of the United States,.If you've heard or watched Alistair Cooke on radio or television, you will know what style and quality of writing to expect from this book, This is a very interesting, timely, and well written book, Cooketohad a long and distinguished career in radio and television as a reporter and commentator, A native of Great Britain, he did graduate studies in America, and moved here permanently in, becoming a U, S. citizen. He was a commentator for NBC and the BBC, His most famous assignments were regularminute radio commentaries on american life broadcast in Britain and eventually throughout the world by the BBC 'Letters from America', spanningyears and as the host of the PBS series 'Masterpiece Theatre' foryears, retiring inage.
This book is essentially a travel log of a driving trip around America starting before Pearl Harbor inand extending to almost, Cooke observed the lives of ordinary Americans during the beginning of the war and their reactions to necessary changes occurring all over the country, He records the beginning of rationing, the loss of manpower and labor as millions of young men went into the service, He observes the buildup of war production, the establishment of innumerable new military installations, and simply the need and ability of Americans to adapt and cope, His descriptions of people, places, the beauty of midcentury America, and his keen ability to look beneath people's stoicism are marvelous, His is a precise and descriptive style of writing that is very rare now, This was an easy, quick, and thoroughly enjoyable read, I recommend it to people interested in twentiethcentury american history and those who simply enjoy excellent writing, Excellant Travel Log Mostly. Learned a few things about that time in American History Reading this book is a remarkable experience, It's a literal roadtrip through America of the earlys, English journalist Alistair Cooke, curious about the effects of World War II across America, but wise enough not to rely on newspaper pronouncements about the war effort or the public's patriotism, set off to explore the entire country and see for himself how the war was affecting people's lives, and if possible, how they felt about it.
The answer, of course, was neither simple nor small, The term "home front" here does not describe, say, a picture of what daytoday life was like for the average middleclass American family in your typical American town, It's rather a sweeping tour of a big and incredibly varied country where the effects of the war were felt in hundreds of different ways, each specific to its own particular bit of American landscape and culture.
As Cooke puts it, "You learn, . . that 'war' means all things to all men, but mostly it means the daybyday effect on their own job or crop, "
This being the case, there's a strong focus on the economic impacts of the war on different industries, professions, agriculture, labor, housing, We're taken not just through shipyards and defense plants, but are shown the effects of wartime demand and regulations on everything from lumber to cattleranching to insurance to the growing of oranges, beets or dates.
We see towns teeming with an inrush of migrant workers to suddenlysprungup war plants, farmers lamenting the loss of workers to the draft or factories, Cooke visits small towns and big cities, talks to people in diners and drugstores and railroad stations and by the side of the road, Some of the moments are unforgettablethe quiet, grieving New Mexico town which lost a National Guard unit on Bataan the encounter with the boy driving an icecream truck on a lonely California road while on furlough from the Army or the wry humor of the Miami luxury hotels driving a bargain with the military taking them over for training schools.
My original reason for picking up this book was for research, with a hope that I'd learn some specifics about that average homefront life I mentioned above and while I didn't exactly find that, I did glean one important thing.
I think this book reminds you that everyday life in all its American varieties didn't just stop or become entirely wrapped up in "the war effort"it wasn't all blackouts and scrap drives and victory gardens.
Reading books about the military campaigns can kind of give you the skewed impression that life at home just slowed to a stop and waited while the men were overseas.
But it didn't. People didn't just sit by the radio waiting for war news they still got up and ate and chose what clothes to wear and went to church and school and work, even if wartime conditions changed how they did some of these things.
Part of what makes it interesting is Cooke's point of view, An Englishman, but also an American citizen who had evidently lived in the country for some time when he made this trip, he has enough of an outsider's perspective to be somewhat dispassionate, but enough knowledge of America and Americans to talk about them with understanding.
Plus he's an excellent writer, Everything he notes is set in the context of the landscape he travels through, and so we get sharply observant descriptions of the deep South, the desert Southwest, the lush California coast, the mountains of Oregon and the plains of Kansas wheat, Minnesota dairy farms and New England in the autumn.
There's really too much to do justice to in a brief review, We're treated to quick but observant snapshot views of the character of major American cities in the early forties, the changing scenery along the highways that link them and the small towns, farms and roadside diners along the way.
It's a priceless time capsulenot least because it shows a vanished America, one much closer to its pioneer roots than it is to anything in our twentyfirst century, I found this book to be very unfulfilling, I guess, since it was written by Alistair Cooke, I was expecting more, Instead of getting a real feel of what the U, S. home front was experiencing during the war, it came across more as a travelogue of his trip reaching most states of the union in the early days of the war.
Is it shameful that I really wish someone other than Alistairs son narrated this
sitelinkMy Full I really wanted to like this book, since I have always liked Cooke's 'Letter from America'.
I did like the very descriptive language it is very rich and poetic, The phrasing to me feels like small currents and eddies in a river, One sentence flows into the next, which flows into yet another the strands of narrative are woven together in an endless tapestry, streaming past in a continuous story, This style is vary familiar from his radio programs, Unfortunately, this did not seem to work for me in a much longer work, Whereas in the shorter programs, he always seems to reach a poignant or symbolic end, tying back to the beginning, in this book, I had to wait until the very end to find a pause of any sort.
Perhaps another way to say it was that there was not much dynamic range, The tempo of the writing never varied and never seemed to reach intermediate conclusions,
Still, this was an entertaining book, Cooke is a master at describing American life,
It was also worth a read for the content, I have read many historical books about the war, but never learned much about how it affected life in the United States, This book gave a very interesting picture of how the entire economy was affected by the war, It gives a picture of the enormous effort we put forth to win the war, not just on the battlefield, but on the assembly lines, factories, farms, and countryside,
I know who Alistair Cooke is unfortunately my biggest memory is watching Cookie Monster impersonate him as I watched Sesame Street with my daughters! but I was not all that familiar with his work.
Nevertheless I had heard of this book so I bought it when it came up in a history book email not really knowing that he actually wrote this during WWII but that it was not published until.
It is dated in some ways and also incredibly up to date perhaps because we Americans are still discussing/arguing about some of the same topics: race relations, American industry and the loss of it, American housing, immigration.
It was not a fast reading book but it was a book that kept me reading, .