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This collection offers a multifaceted exploration of World War One and its aftermath in the northern American Heartland, a region often overlooked in wartime histories. The chapters feature archival and newspaper documentation and visual imagery from this era. The first section, “Heartland Histories,” explores experiences of conscription and home front mobilization in the small communities of the heartland, highlighting tensions associated with patriotism, class, ethnicities, and locale. In one chapter, the previously unpublished cartoon art of a USAF POW displays his Midwestern sensibilities. Section Two, “Homefront Propaganda,” examines the cultural networks disseminating national war messages, notably the critical work of local theaters, Four Minute Men, the Allied War Exhibitions, and the local commemorative displays of military relics. Section Three, “Gender in/and War,” highlights aspects often over-shadowed by male experiences of the war itself, including the patriotic mother, androgynous representations in wartime propaganda, and masculine violence following the war. Together, this volume provides rich portraits of the complexities of heartland home front experiences and legacies.
The Civil War has historically been viewed somewhat simplistically as a battle between the North and the South. Southern historians have broadened this viewpoint by revealing the “many Souths” that made up the Confederacy, but the “North” has remained largely undifferentiated as a geopolitical term. In this welcome collection, seven Civil War scholars offer a unique regional perspective on the Civil War by examining how a specific group of Northerners—Midwesterners, known as Westerners and Middle Westerners during the 1860s—experienced the war on the home front. Much of the intensifying political and ideological turmoil of the 1850s played out in the Midwest and instilled in its people a powerful sense of connection to this important drama. The 1850 federal Fugitive Slave Law and highly visible efforts to recapture former bondsmen and women who had escaped; underground railroad “stations” and supporters throughout the region; publication of Ohioan Harriet Beecher Stowe’s widely-influential and best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854; the murderous abolitionist John Brown, who gained notoriety and hero status attacking proslavery advocates in Kansas; the emergence of the Republican Party and Illinoisan Abraham Lincoln—all placed the Midwest at the center of the rising sectional tensions. From the exploitation of Confederate prisoners in Ohio to wartime college enrollment in Michigan, these essays reveal how Midwestern men, women, families, and communities became engaged in myriad war-related activities and support. Agriculture figures prominently in the collection, with several scholars examining the agricultural power of the region and the impact of the war on farming, farm families, and farm women. Contributors also consider student debates and reactions to questions of patriotism, the effect of the war on military families’ relationships, issues of women’s loyalty and deference to male authority, as well as the treatment of political dissent and dissenters. Bringing together an assortment of home front topics from a variety of fresh perspectives, this collection offers a view of the Civil War that is unabashedly Midwestern.
New scholarship on World War II continues to broaden our understanding. With each passing year we know more about the triumphs and the tragedies of America’s involvement in the momentous conflict. Tapping into this greater awareness of the accomplishments of both soldiers and civilians and a better recognition of the consequences of decisions made, Allan Winkler presents the third edition of his highly popular series volume. Informed by the latest historical literature and featuring many new thoughtfully chosen photographs, the third edition of Home Front U.S.A. continues to ponder the question of "the good war," the moral implications of the use of the atomic bomb, the implications of expanding wartime roles for women, African Americans, American Jews, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans at the hands of the federal government, and the experiences of the many other people who, though relegated to the fringe of mainstream society, contributed in important ways to the nation's successful prosecution of its greatest challenge.
In the 1960s the Air Force buried 1,000 ICBMs in pastures across the Great Plains to keep U.S. nuclear strategy out of view. As rural civilians of all political stripes found themselves living in the Soviet crosshairs, a proud Plains individualism gave way to an economic dependence on the military-industrial complex that still persists today.
Includes primary sources on defense workers, women during the war, conscientious objectors, scrap metal collection and recycling, racial issues on the homefront, and civil defense.
Without trial and without due process, the United States government locked up nearly all of those citizens and longtime residents who were of Japanese descent during World War II. Ten concentration camps were set up across the country to confine over 120,000 inmates. Almost 20,000 of them were shipped to the only two camps in the segregated South—Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas—locations that put them right in the heart of a much older, long-festering system of racist oppression. The first history of these Arkansas camps, Concentration Camps on the Home Front is an eye-opening account of the inmates’ experiences and a searing examination of American imperialism and racist hysteria. While the basic facts of Japanese-American incarceration are well known, John Howard’s extensive research gives voice to those whose stories have been forgotten or ignored. He highlights the roles of women, first-generation immigrants, and those who forcefully resisted their incarceration by speaking out against dangerous working conditions and white racism. In addition to this overlooked history of dissent, Howard also exposes the government’s aggressive campaign to Americanize the inmates and even convert them to Christianity. After the war ended, this movement culminated in the dispersal of the prisoners across the nation in a calculated effort to break up ethnic enclaves. Howard’s re-creation of life in the camps is powerful, provocative, and disturbing. Concentration Camps on the Home Front rewrites a notorious chapter in American history—a shameful story that nonetheless speaks to the strength of human resilience in the face of even the most grievous injustices.
The Civil War was arguably the watershed event in the history of the United States, forever changing the nature of the Republic and the relationship of individuals to their government. The war ended slavery and initiated the long road toward racial equality. The United States now stands at the sesquicentennial of that event, and its citizens attempt to arrive at an understanding of what that event meant to the past, present, and future of the nation. Few states had a greater impact on the outcome of the nation⿿s greatest calamity than Georgia. Georgia provided 125,000 soldiers for the Confederacy as well as thousands more for the Union cause. Also, many of the Confederacy⿿s most influential military and civilian leaders hailed from the state. Georgia was vital to the Confederate war effort because of its agricultural and industrial output. The Confederacy had little hope of winning without the farms and shops of the state. Moreover, the state was critical to the Southern infrastructure because of the river and rail links that crossed it and connected the western Confederacy to the eastern half. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the war was arguably decided in North Georgia with the Atlanta Campaign and Lincoln⿿s subsequent reelection. This campaign was the last forlorn hope for the Southern Republic and the Union⿿s greatest triumph. Despite the state⿿s importance to the Confederacy and the war⿿s ultimate outcome, not enough has been written concerning Georgia⿿s experience during those turbulent years. The essays in this volume attempt to redress this dearth of scholarship. They present a mosaic of events, places, and people, exploring the impact of the war on Georgia and its residents and demonstrating the importance of the state to the outcome of the Civil War.
*Finalist for the National Book Award* *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize* *Instant New York Times Bestseller* *Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly* An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country and “a deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight”.* Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. During Sarah’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country. Beautifully written, in a distinctive voice, Heartland combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, challenging the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. “Heartland is one of a growing number of important works—including Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville—that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America’s postindustrial decline...Smarsh shows how the false promise of the ‘American dream’ was used to subjugate the poor. It’s a powerful mantra” *(The New York Times Book Review).
Urban poverty, along with all of its poignant manifestations, is moving from city centers to working-class and industrial suburbs in contemporary America. Nowhere is this more evident than in East St. Louis, Illinois. Once a thriving manufacturing and transportation center, East St. Louis is now known for its unemployment, crime, and collapsing infrastructure. Abandoned in the Heartland takes us into the lives of East St. Louis’s predominantly African American residents to find out what has happened since industry abandoned the city, and jobs, quality schools, and city services disappeared, leaving people isolated and imperiled. Jennifer Hamer introduces men who search for meaning and opportunity in dead-end jobs, women who often take on caretaking responsibilities until well into old age, and parents who have the impossible task of protecting their children in this dangerous, and literally toxic, environment. Illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs showing how the city has changed over time, this book, full of stories of courage and fortitude, offers a powerful vision of the transformed circumstances of life in one American suburb.