Freedom's Forge

Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812982045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SELECTED BY THE ECONOMIST AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR “A rambunctious book that is itself alive with the animal spirits of the marketplace.”—The Wall Street Journal Freedom’s Forge reveals how two extraordinary American businessmen—General Motors automobile magnate William “Big Bill” Knudsen and shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser—helped corral, cajole, and inspire business leaders across the country to mobilize the “arsenal of democracy” that propelled the Allies to victory in World War II. Drafting top talent from companies like Chrysler, Republic Steel, Boeing, Lockheed, GE, and Frigidaire, Knudsen and Kaiser turned auto plants into aircraft factories and civilian assembly lines into fountains of munitions. In four short years they transformed America’s army from a hollow shell into a truly global force, laying the foundations for the country’s rise as an economic as well as military superpower. Freedom’s Forge vividly re-creates American industry’s finest hour, when the nation’s business elites put aside their pursuit of profits and set about saving the world. Praise for Freedom’s Forge “A rarely told industrial saga, rich with particulars of the growing pains and eventual triumphs of American industry . . . Arthur Herman has set out to right an injustice: the loss, down history’s memory hole, of the epic achievements of American business in helping the United States and its allies win World War II.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . It’s not often that a historian comes up with a fresh approach to an absolutely critical element of the Allied victory in World War II, but Pulitzer finalist Herman . . . has done just that.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A compulsively readable tribute to ‘the miracle of mass production.’ ”—Publishers Weekly “The production statistics cited by Mr. Herman . . . astound.”—The Economist “[A] fantastic book.”—Forbes “Freedom’s Forge is the story of how the ingenuity and energy of the American private sector was turned loose to equip the finest military force on the face of the earth. In an era of gathering threats and shrinking defense budgets, it is a timely lesson told by one of the great historians of our time.”—Donald Rumsfeld

A Call to Arms

Author: Maury Klein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608194094
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 916

Book Description
The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the world's history. The United States had to fight a war across two oceans and three continents--and to do so, it had to build and equip a military that was all but nonexistent before the war began. Never in the nation's history did it have to create, outfit, transport, and supply huge armies, navies, and air forces on so many distant and disparate fronts. The Axis powers might have fielded better-trained soldiers, better weapons, and better tanks and aircraft, but they could not match American productivity. The United States buried its enemies in aircraft, ships, tanks, and guns; in this sense, American industry and American workers, won World War II. The scale of the effort was titanic, and the result historic. Not only did it determine the outcome of the war, but it transformed the American economy and society. Maury Klein's A Call to Arms is the definitive narrative history of this epic struggle--told by one of America's greatest historians of business and economics--and renders the transformation of America with a depth and vividness never available before.

Design for Victory

Author: William L. Bird
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568981406
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description
The poster - inexpensive, colorful, and immediate - was an ideal medium for delivering messages about Americans' duties on the home front during World War II. Design for Victory presents more than 150 of these stunning images - many never reproduced since their first issue - culled from the collections of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. William L. Bird, Jr. and Harry R. Rubenstein delve beneath the surface of these colorful graphics, telling the stories behind their production and revealing how posters fulfilled the goals and needs of their creators. The authors describe the history of how specific posters were conceived and received, focusing on the workings of the wartime advertising profession and demonstrating how posters often reflected uneasy relations between labor and management.

Inherited Freedom

Author: Tim Drake
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1496902041
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
I acknowledge and fondly remember my grandfathers, Maurice Elmer Drake and Archibald Vance Houston, who provided me with the inspiration and foundation necessary to share their story. I would like to humbly express my appreciation to the men of the 558th AAA AW BN and U.S.S. Culebra Island ARG7 for telling their stories. I stand in awe of the countless World War II veterans I have interviewed over the years. Lastly, thank you to the millions of World War II veterans who served our country during 1939-1945. Our current freedom was paid for in blood it is the responsibility of my generation and those that follow to never forget the cost of freedom and to protect it at all costs.

Freedom's Landing

Author: Anne McCaffrey
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101655909
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Book Description
Kristin Bjornsen lived a normal life, right up until the day the spaceships floated into view above Denver. As human slaves were herded into the maw of a massive vessel, Kristin realized her normal life was over and her fight for freedom was just beginning… The alien Catteni value strength and intelligence in their slaves—and Kristin has managed to survive her enslavement while hundreds of other humans have not. But her trial has just begun, for now she finds herself part of a massive experiment. The aliens have discovered a new world, and they have a simple way of finding out if it’s habitable: drop hundreds of slaves on the surface and see what happens. If they survive, colonization can begin. If not, there are always more slaves.

Gaining Freedoms

Author: Berna Turam
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804794529
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Gaining Freedoms reveals a new locus for global political change: everyday urban contestation. Cities are often assumed hotbeds of socio-economic division, but this assessment overlooks the importance of urban space and the everyday activities of urban life for empowerment, emancipation, and democratization. Through proximity, neighborhoods, streets, and squares can create unconventional power contestations over lifestyle and consumption. And through struggle, negotiation, and cooperation, competing claims across groups can become platforms to defend freedom and rights from government encroachments. Drawing on more than seven years of fieldwork in three contested urban sites—a downtown neighborhood and a university campus in Istanbul, and a Turkish neighborhood in Berlin—Berna Turam shows how democratic contestation echoes through urban space. Countering common assumptions that Turkey is strongly polarized between Islamists and secularists, she illustrates how contested urban space encourages creative politics, the kind of politics that advance rights, expression, and representation shared between pious and secular groups. Exceptional moments of protest, like the recent Gezi protests which bookend this study, offer clear external signs of upheaval and disruption, but it is the everyday contestation and interaction that forge alliances and inspire change. Ultimately, Turam argues that the process of democratization is not the reduction of conflict, but rather the capacity to form new alliances out of conflict.

Following the Drum

Author: Nancy K. Loane
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640123954
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Book Description
Friday, December 19, 1777, dawned cold and windy. Fourteen thousand Continental Army soldiers tramped from dawn to dusk along the rutted Pennsylvania roads from Gulph Mills to Valley Forge, the site of their winter encampment. The soldiers' arrival was followed by the army's wagons and hundreds of camp women. Following the Drum tells the story of the forgotten women who spent the winter of 1777-78 with the Continental Army at Valley Forge--from those on society's lowest rungs to ladies on the upper echelons. Impoverished and clinging to the edge of survival, many camp women were soldiers' wives who worked as the army's washers, nurses, cooks, and seamstresses. Other women at the encampment were of higher status: they traveled with George Washington's entourage when the army headquarters shifted locations and served the general as valued cooks, laundresses, or housekeepers. There were also the ladies at Valley Forge who were not subject to the harsh conditions of camp life and came and went as they and their husbands, Washington's generals and military advisers, saw fit. Nancy K. Loane uses sources such as issued military orders, pension depositions after the war, soldiers' descriptions, and some of the women's own diary entries and letters to bring these women to life.

Freedom's Sword

Author: Traquair
Publisher: Collins
ISBN: 9780004720807
Category : Scotland
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Freedome(tm)s Sword is a vivid, popular history of the longest period of conflict between Scotland and Englande"the wars that established Scotland as an independent nation.

Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

Author: Jill Lindsey Harrison
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262297884
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
An examination of political conflicts over pesticide drift and the differing conceptions of justice held by industry, regulators, and activists. The widespread but virtually invisible problem of pesticide drift—the airborne movement of agricultural pesticides into residential areas—has fueled grassroots activism from Maine to Hawaii. Pesticide drift accidents have terrified and sickened many living in the country's most marginalized and vulnerable communities. In this book, Jill Lindsey Harrison considers political conflicts over pesticide drift in California, using them to illuminate the broader problem and its potential solutions. The fact that pesticide pollution and illnesses associated with it disproportionately affect the poor and the powerless raises questions of environmental justice (and political injustice). Despite California's impressive record of environmental protection, massive pesticide regulatory apparatus, and booming organic farming industry, pesticide-related accidents and illnesses continue unabated. To unpack this conundrum, Harrison examines the conceptions of justice that increasingly shape environmental politics and finds that California's agricultural industry, regulators, and pesticide drift activists hold different, and conflicting, notions of what justice looks like. Drawing on her own extensive ethnographic research as well as in-depth interviews with regulators, activists, scientists, and public health practitioners, Harrison examines the ways industry, regulatory agencies, and different kinds of activists address pesticide drift, connecting their efforts to communitarian and libertarian conceptions of justice. The approach taken by pesticide drift activists, she finds, not only critiques theories of justice undergirding mainstream sustainable-agriculture activism, but also offers an entirely new notion of what justice means. To solve seemingly intractable environmental problems such as pesticide drift, Harrison argues, we need a different kind of environmental justice. She proposes the precautionary principle as a framework for effectively and justly addressing environmental inequities in the everyday work of environmental regulatory institutions.

Freedom's Cost

Author: Janet Uhlar
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 1457503069
Category : Generals
Languages : en
Pages : 478

Book Description
Nathanael Greene was the strategist of the American Revolution. His role in the War for Independence was second only to General George Washington. Born and reared a Quaker, with no military experience, he was promoted from private to brigadier general over night. Greene quickly became Washington's confidant and close friend. He was chosen by the Commander to lead the Continental Army should Washington be killed, injured, or taken captive. Nathanael's vivacious wife Caty, a favorite of the Washingtons, added brightness to the dark, dreary existence of camp life. She proved to be a source of joy and comfort to her husband throughout the war--as well as a heartache and challenge. It was General Nathanael Greene who pulled the Continental Army from the throes of death at Valley Forge. It was General Greene who petitioned Congress for a Declaration of Independence. It was Nathanael Greene who was given the desperate task of commanding the Southern Department of the Continental Army after other commanders had failed. It was Greene who drove British General Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown. Unable to participate or witness the victorious battle, he was forced to immediately return South with his troops, and subdue the remaining British forces. Greene led his troops in battle and laid siege for a year after the victory at Yorktown. His persistence finally forced the British to evacuate the South. George Washington and Nathanael Greene were the only general officers who served in that position throughout the war. Greene led his men in more battles than any other general officer, including Washington. Moreover, it was Greene who was constantly harassed by Congress, and ultimately forsaken by them. Three years after the official end of the war, Nathanael Greene was dead. His premature death was not only a result of the intense hardships of war, but the hardships and cruelty inflicted on him by the United States Congress. Janet Uhlar was born in Quincy, Massachusetts--the hometown of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Hancock, and Josiah Quincy, Jr. Through her works of biographical-fiction, she hopes to present the extraordinary stories of forgotten heroes of the American Revolution. Janet firmly believes that when the private lives and unique personalities of historical figures are presented, and the dynamics between these characters brought out, history becomes much more than cold black print on a stark white page. History takes on a life of its own, with true flesh and blood individuals whose acts of courage, indifference, or cowardice shaped the world we live in today. This living history helps us relate to those who have gone before--offering inspiration, courage, and a sense of determination. Janet is also the author of Liberty's Martyr: The Story of Dr. Joseph Warren. She lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.