Review by Choice Review
Kennedy's book is the most illuminating, riveting, comprehensive, and graceful one-volume history of this nation's experiences during the Great Depression, New Deal, and WW II published to date. In a superb combination of historiographic synthesis, trenchant interpretation, and unusually elegant prose, Kennedy explains the economic weaknesses of the Depression-era US, the political compromises inherent in the drafting of the Social Security Act, the underlying agonies of Lend Lease, and a wartime meeting of the Big Three with the same intimacy, dramatic command, and patience that FDR brought to his Fireside Chats. This is social, political, diplomatic, and military history written magisterially with broad but nuanced strokes across a 16-year span that utterly transformed the lives of Americans and the world. Security and stability, Kennedy reminds readers, were the touchstones of the New Deal and, ultimately, of an American foreign policy that mobilized the nation's economic abundance, scientific prowess, and democratic yearnings in behalf of "the last good war." Librarians should order this book for their libraries, faculty members should assign it, and everyone should read it. All levels. E. M. Tobin Hamilton College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
In this latest volume in the award-winning Oxford History of the United States series, Kennedy, professor of history at Stanford, combines the best aspects of narrative and history. His wonderful single-volume history of the era is comprehensive and well researched, and scholars will find much that is new and informative. At the same time, it is a smoothly flowing and easily digestible account of great events, and well-informed lay readers will have little difficulty in following and appreciating this saga. Of course, at the center of this story is FDR, and Kennedy portrays him as a truly brilliant politician with the skills to inspire, manipulate, and bend people to his will. This is a work replete with revealing subtexts, and Roosevelt's relations and struggles with African American leaders are especially fascinating. It is a worthy addition to an outstanding series and an essential component to a U.S. history collection for both public and college libraries. (Reviewed March 15, 1999)0195038347Jay Freeman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Rarely does a work of historical synthesis combine such trenchant analysis and elegant writing as does Kennedy's spectacular contribution to the Oxford History of the United States. A Stanford history professor and winner of the Bancroft Prize (for Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger), Kennedy uses a wide canvas to depict all aspects of the American political, social and economic experience from 1929 to 1945. Throughout, he takes care to detail parts of the American story often neglected by more casual histories. For example, he introduces readers to the "old poor," the third of the country that had not prospered during the '20s and were among the most ravaged by the '30s. He also provides a stunningly original reinterpretation of the competing forces and interests that combined to shape the New Deal under FDR's direction. And he gives deliberate and enlightening attention to the "Great Debate" between isolationists and internationalists in the '30s. The book's final 400 pages admirably demonstrate exactly how the U.S. emerged victorious in WWII: not just through military prowess, but also through capably managed homefront economics and propaganda. Because of its scope, its insight and its purring narrative engine, Kennedy's book will stand for years to come as the definitive history of the most important decades of the American century. 48 halftones; 10 linecuts. 50,000 first printing; first serial to the Atlantic Monthly; History Book Club main selection; author tour. (May) FYI: Previous volumes in the Oxford History of the United States are Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause, James M. McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom and James T. Patterson's Bancroft Prize-winning Grand Expectations. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
With this history of the Depression, New Deal, and World War II, Stanford University's Kennedy becomes the latest contributor to Oxford's distinguished series on U.S. history. Kennedy has a distinguished record of his own, with two acclaimed books, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (LJ 8/70) and Over Here: The First World War and American Society (LJ 10/1/80). Displaying a literary craft uncommon in survey works, he has woven together narrative, sketches of character, and critical judgment to record and analyze the economic, political, social, and military events of these epic years. Readers who feel they live in an era of tumultuous change might well consult Kennedy's book. This account of the crucial struggles and events of the Depression and war years will lend perspective like few others. For all libraries.ÄRobert F. Nardini, North Chichester, NH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The latest volume of the Oxford History of the United States, an exhaustive survey spanning 16 years of crises, ordeals, fears, and insecurities. Kennedy (History/Stanford Univ.; Over Here: The First World War and American Society, 1980) writes of post-WWI disillusionment, the collapse of farm prices that had been driven higher by the war, and the great movement of rural people to the cities. President Hoover, the laissez-faire whipping boy of the Great Depression, emerges here as a well-intentioned workaholic who tried valiantly with many plans and experiments, despite some faulty philosophy, to bring his country out of the economic free fall that resulted from the effects of the Treaty of Versailles (huge and ruinous war reparations imposed on Germany, record tariffs that severely damaged international trade), a gold standard that restricted the money supply, and an unregulated, speculative stock market that fed on excess credit and caused widespread bank failures and massive unemployment. Kennedy describes the great fear paralyzing the country when FDR came to power. The flood of New Deal legislation attempted to use the government to build social and economic security for its citizens. It didn't end the Depression, but it did create permanent monuments in American life, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and banking and stock market reforms. Full economic recovery followed the US entrance into WWII, from which a newly prosperous, confident America emerged, despite the loss of more than 400,000 lives. The author does well in selecting salient events and colorful, representative details to illuminate this critical period in the American Century. A major achievement in objective historical writing that should be a legacy to generations of students seeking authoritative reference material on the period. (First printing of 50,000; first serial to the Atlantic Monthly; author tour)
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