Download or read book The Home Fronts of Iowa 1939 1945 written by Lisa L. Ossian and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2009-10-16 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Americans geared up for World War II, each state responded according to its economy and circumstances—as well as the disposition of its citizens. This book considers the war years in Iowa by looking at activity on different home fronts and analyzing the resilience of Iowans in answering the call to support the war effort. With its location in the center of the country, far from potentially threatened coasts, Iowa was also the center of American isolationism—historically Republican and resistant to involvement in another European war. Yet Iowans were quick to step up, and Lisa Ossian draws on historical archives as well as on artifacts of popular culture to record the rhetoric and emotion of their support. Ossian shows how Iowans quickly moved from skepticism to overwhelming enthusiasm for the war and answered the call on four fronts: farms, factories, communities, and kitchens. Iowa’s farmers faced labor and machinery shortages, yet produced record amounts of crops and animals—even at the expense of valuable topsoil. Ordnance plants turned out bombs and machine gun bullets. Meanwhile, communities supported war bond and scrap drives, while housewives coped with rationing, raised Victory gardens, and turned to home canning. The Home Fronts of Iowa, 1939–1945 depicts real people and their concerns, showing the price paid in physical and mental exhaustion and notes the heavy toll exacted on Iowa’s sons who fell in battle. Ossian also considers the relevance of such issues as race, class, and gender—particularly the role of women on the home front and the recruitment of both women and blacks for factory work—taking into account a prevalent suspicion of ethnic groups by the state’s largely homogeneous population. The fact that Iowans could become loyal citizen soldiers—forming an Industrial and Defense Commission even before Pearl Harbor—speaks not only to the patriotism of these sturdy midwesterners but also to the overall resilience of Americans. In unraveling how Iowans could so overwhelmingly support the war, Ossian digs deep into history to show us the power of emotion—and to help us better understand why World War II is consistently remembered as “the Good War.”

Download or read book The Home Fronts of Iowa 1940 1945 written by Lisa Lynn Ossian and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lowa's citizens during World War II became soldiers in their loyalty, energy, and commitment as they fought on one or more of the home fronts. These four home fronts (historic terms) were the farm, production, community, and kitchen fronts. The farm front as part of the Food for Freedom campaign produced corn, soybeans, eggs, pork, beef, milk, and hemp for the Armed Services and the Allies. Iowa's farmers faced labor and machinery shortages yet produced record amounts of crops and animals. This prosperity, however, cost Iowa some of its valuable topsoil and initiated a turn toward a factory perspective of farming. The production front manufactured bombs at the Iowa Ordnance Plant and machine-gun bullets at the Des Moines Ordnance Plant along with various sub-contracts at factories located throughout the state. Iowans were extremely productive soldiers of war, producing such items as mule packs, airplane parts, and highly-purified uranium.

Download or read book A New History of Iowa written by Jeff Bremer and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-10-06 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The state of Iowa is largely unappreciated and often misunderstood. It has a small population and sits in the middle of a huge country. It’s thought of as an uninspiring place full of farms and fields of corn. But Iowa represents America as surely as New York and California, and Iowa’s history is more dynamic, complicated, and influential than commonly imagined. Jeff Bremer’s A New History of Iowa offers the most comprehensive history of the Hawkeye State ever written, surveying Iowa from the last ice age through the COVID-19 pandemic. It tells a new and vibrant story, examining the state’s small-town culture, politics, social and economic development, and its many diverse inhabitants. Bremer features well-known individuals, such as Sauk leader Black Hawk, artist Grant Wood, botanist George Washington Carver, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, and President Herbert Hoover. But Bremer broadens the state’s story by including new voices—among them, runaway enslaved men who joined Iowa’s 60th Colored Regiment in the Civil War, young female pearl button factory workers, Latino railroad workers who migrated to the state in the early twentieth century, and recent refugees from Southeast Asia and the Balkans. This new story of Iowa provides a brisk, readable narrative written for a broad audience, from high school and college students to teachers and scholars to general readers. It tells the story of ordinary and extraordinary people of all backgrounds and greatly improves our knowledge of a state whose history has been neglected. A New History of Iowa is for everyone who wants to learn about Iowa’s surprising, complex, and remarkable past.

Download or read book Committed to Victory written by Richard Holl and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-10-09 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Deeply researched and clearly written . . . a wide-ranging and detailed account of Kentucky’s society, economy, and politics during World War II.” —John W. Jeffries, author of Wartime America When World War II broke out in Europe in September 1939, Kentucky was still plagued by the Great Depression. Even though the inevitably of war had become increasingly apparent earlier that year, the citizens of the Commonwealth continued to view foreign affairs as a lesser concern compared to issues such as the lingering economic depression, the approaching planting season, and the upcoming gubernatorial race. It was only the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that destroyed any lingering illusions of peace. In Committed to Victory: The Kentucky Home Front During World War II, author Richard Holl offers the first comprehensive examination of the Commonwealth’s civilian sector during this pivotal era in the state’s history. National mobilization efforts rapidly created centers of war production and activity in Louisville, Paducah, and Richmond, producing new economic prosperity in the struggling region. The war effort also spurred significant societal changes, including the emergence of female and minority workforces in the state. In the Bluegrass, this trend found its face in Pulaski County native Rose Will Monroe, who was discovered as she assembled B-24 and B-29 bombers and was cast as Rosie the Riveter in films supporting the war effort. Revealing the struggles and triumphs of civilians during World War II, Holl illuminates the personal costs of the war, the black market for rationed foods and products, and even the inspiration that coach Adolph Rupp and the University of Kentucky basketball team offered to a struggling state.

Download or read book Destructive Creation written by Mark R. Wilson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-07-06 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, the United States helped vanquish the Axis powers by converting its enormous economic capacities into military might. Producing nearly two-thirds of all the munitions used by Allied forces, American industry became what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "the arsenal of democracy." Crucial in this effort were business leaders. Some of these captains of industry went to Washington to coordinate the mobilization, while others led their companies to churn out weapons. In this way, the private sector won the war—or so the story goes. Based on new research in business and military archives, Destructive Creation shows that the enormous mobilization effort relied not only on the capacities of private companies but also on massive public investment and robust government regulation. This public-private partnership involved plenty of government-business cooperation, but it also generated antagonism in the American business community that had lasting repercussions for American politics. Many business leaders, still engaged in political battles against the New Deal, regarded the wartime government as an overreaching regulator and a threatening rival. In response, they mounted an aggressive campaign that touted the achievements of for-profit firms while dismissing the value of public-sector contributions. This probusiness story about mobilization was a political success, not just during the war, but afterward, as it shaped reconversion policy and the transformation of the American military-industrial complex. Offering a groundbreaking account of the inner workings of the "arsenal of democracy," Destructive Creation also suggests how the struggle to define its heroes and villains has continued to shape economic and political development to the present day.

Download or read book The Forgotten Generation written by Lisa L. Ossian and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-05-23 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the effect of the challenges of World War II on American children and teenagers.

Download or read book Louisiana during World War II written by Jerry Purvis Sanson and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the impact of World War II on America and other countries has been exhaustively chronicled, few historians have investigated the experiences of individual states during the tumultuous war years. In his study of Louisiana’s home front from 1939 to 1945, Jerry Purvis Sanson examines changes in politics, education, agriculture, industry, and society that forever altered the Pelican State. The war era was a particularly important time in Louisiana’s colorful political history. The gubernatorial victories of prominent anti–Huey Long candidates Sam Jones in 1940 and Jimmie Davis in 1944 reflected shifting sentiments toward politicians and heralded a changing of the guard in the statehouse. This created a system of active dual-faction politics that continued for the next decade. The war also transformed the state’s economy: agricultural mechanization accelerated to compensate for labor shortages, and industries increased production to meet military demands. Louisiana’s educational system modified its curriculum in response to the war, providing technical training and sponsoring scrap-metal collections and war-stamp sales drives. Sanson explores the war’s effect on the everyday lives of Louisianians, showing how their actions at home provided them with a sense of personal participation in the titanic effort against the Axis powers. He also points out that, while many found their lives limited by war, two groups—African Americans and women— experienced increased opportunities as they moved from low-paying jobs to more lucrative positions vacated by white males who had departed for the service. Now condensed for easy and efficient access, Sanson’s historical account provides a wide-ranging yet intimate look at how the war was brought home to the people of the Bayou State.

Download or read book The Depression Dilemmas of Rural Iowa 1929 1933 written by Lisa L. Ossian and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To many rural Iowans, the stock market crash on New York’s Wall Street in October 1929 seemed an event far removed from their lives, even though the effects of the crash became all too real throughout the state. From 1929 to 1933, the enthusiastic faith that most Iowans had in Iowan President Herbert Hoover was transformed into bitter disappointment with the federal government. As a result, Iowans directly questioned their leadership at the state, county, and community levels with a renewed spirit to salvage family farms, demonstrating the uniqueness of Iowa’s rural life. Beginning with an overview of the state during 1929, Lisa L. Ossian describes Iowa’s particular rural dilemmas, evoking, through anecdotes and examples, the economic, nutritional, familial, cultural, industrial, criminal, legal, and political challenges that engaged the people of the state. The following chapters analyze life during the early Depression: new prescriptions for children’s health, creative housekeeping to stretch resources, the use of farm “playlets” to communicate new information creatively and memorably, the demise of the soft coal mining industry, increased violence within the landscape, and the movement to end Prohibition. The challenges faced in the early Great Depression years between 1929 and 1933 encouraged resourcefulness rather than passivity, creativity rather than resignation, and community rather than hopelessness. Of particular interest is the role of women within the rural landscape, as much of the increased daily work fell to farm women during this time. While the women addressed this work simply as “making do,” Ossian shows that their resourcefulness entailed complex planning essential for families’ emotional and physical health. Ossian’s epilogue takes readers into the Iowa of today, dominated by industrial agriculture, and asks the reader to consider if this model that stemmed from Depression-era innovation is sustainable. Her rich rural history not only helps readers understand the particular forces at work that shaped the social and physical landscape of the past but also traces how these landscapes have continued in various forms for almost eighty years into this century.

Download or read book American Women During World War II written by Doris Weatherford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-10-16 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Women during World War II documents the lives and stories of women who contributed directly to the war effort via official and semi-official military organizations, as well as the millions of women who worked in civilian defense industries, ranging from aircraft maintenance to munitions manufacturing and much more. It also illuminates how the war changed the lives of women in more traditional home front roles. All women had to cope with rationing of basic household goods, and most women volunteered in war-related programs. Other entries discuss institutional change, as the war affected every aspect of life, including as schools, hospitals, and even religion. American Women during World War II provides a handy one-volume collection of information and images suitable for any public or professional library.

Download or read book Presidents and Place written by Thomas Cobb and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presidents and Place: America's Favorite Sons highlights the interrelationship between America's leading political icons and various facets of space and place, including places of birth and death as well as regional allegiances, among others. The chapters examine the legacy of relationships between presidents and place in a variety of social and cultural forms, ranging from famous political campaigns to television series to developments in tourism. Beginning with the political iconography of New York's Federal Hall in early eighteenth-century America and ending with a focus on the Republican Party's electoral relationship with the South, the interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse nature of the chapters reveals that place has more than a biographical significance in relation to US presidents.

Download or read book Railroad History of Winneshiek County written by Ian Schacht and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the settlement of the West can in many aspects be attributed to the coming of a railroad. To the first settlers, the railroads provided the opportunities to link up with markets across the nation without having to travel far from their farms. The lines brought hope and change, but also brought crime and corruption. The story of almost every town west of the Mississippi can in some way be linked to the story of the railroad that serviced the area. These towns grew over the years in size and economic wealth as the amounts of trade and transport transformed the line into a funnel for economic progress. Though the railroads would eventually be challenged by trucking companies and personal automobiles, the business the railroads had help establish lead the community into the wealth they have today. In the northern Iowa county of Winneshiek, each town holds the perfect example of railroad successes and failures. Each town holds their own heritage, which can uniquely be associated with many other towns across the west. The heritage left by the railroads can be directly linked to the heritage of the western United States. To look at the history of us, we need to look into the founding of the railroads.

Download or read book Relief and Rehabilitation for a Post war World written by Samantha K. Knapton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-16 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's first truly international humanitarian organisations, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was championed as a beacon of postwar philanthropy that sought to rehabilitate as well as provide relief. This edited volume offers the first comprehensive study of the UNRRA and seeks to identify the key successes, limitations and enduring challenges it faced in the postwar period. Tracing the rehabilitation of displaced children in the camps of Germany and Austria, to mountainous Greek villages without access to food or medical supplies and refugees in postwar China, it will assess the immediate impact of UNRRA rehabilitation policy on postwar reconstruction, international development and broader humanitarian processes. Through these international case studies it will explore the ways in which a fundamental inability to define 'rehabilitation' made it seemingly impossible to meet its objectives. As a predecessor to modern specialised agencies such as UNESCO, WHO and UNICEF, studying the UNRRA is crucial for our understanding of the history of the United Nations, the circumstances that shaped its future policies and the foundations of modern humanitarianism.

Download or read book Roosevelt s War written by Paul D. Lunde and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 589 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franklin D. Roosevelt pursued the U. S. presidency for more than 25 years. He served in that office longer than any other person, from 1933 until his death in 1945. To achieve the office of president of the United States, FDR practiced deception on a grand scale. He was a charming man, when he wanted to be, and he engaged the willing help of several specific individuals, as well as many others, in his quest for the presidency, and in his successful execution of the duties of that office. As president, FDR steered the U. S. ship of state (a deliberate metaphor) through two of its greatest crises: the Great Depression, and World War II, Roosevelt's War. In doing so, FDR, more than any other person, created the Superpower that the United States is today. This book will tell you how it all happened.

Download or read book No Stopping Us Now written by Gail Collins and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved New York Times columnist "inspires women to embrace aging and look at it with a new sense of hope" in this lively, fascinating, eye-opening look at women and aging in America (Parade Magazine). "You're not getting older, you're getting better," or so promised the famous 1970's ad -- for women's hair dye. Americans have always had a complicated relationship with aging: embrace it, deny it, defer it -- and women have been on the front lines of the battle, willingly or not. In her lively social history of American women and aging, acclaimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins illustrates the ways in which age is an arbitrary concept that has swung back and forth over the centuries. From Plymouth Rock (when a woman was considered marriageable if "civil and under fifty years of age"), to a few generations later, when they were quietly retired to elderdom once they had passed the optimum age for reproduction, to recent decades when freedom from striving in the workplace and caretaking at home is often celebrated, to the first female nominee for president, American attitudes towards age have been a moving target. Gail Collins gives women reason to expect the best of their golden years.

Download or read book American Girls and Global Responsibility written by Jennifer Helgren and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-17 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Girls and Global Responsibility brings together insights from Cold War culture studies, girls’ studies, and the history of gender and militarization to shed new light on how age and gender work together to form categories of citizenship. Jennifer Helgren argues that a new internationalist girl citizenship took root in the country in the years following World War II in youth organizations such as Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, YWCA Y-Teens, schools, and even magazines like Seventeen. She shows the particular ways that girls’ identities and roles were configured, and reveals the links between internationalist youth culture, mainstream U.S. educational goals, and the U.S. government in creating and marketing that internationalist girl, thus shaping the girls’ sense of responsibilities as citizens.

Download or read book Nazis of Copley Square written by Charles Gallagher and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a Catholic Media Association Book Award The forgotten history of American terrorists who, in the name of God, conspired to overthrow the government and formed an alliance with Hitler. On January 13, 1940, FBI agents burst into the homes and offices of seventeen members of the Christian Front, seizing guns, ammunition, and homemade bombs. J. Edgar Hoover’s charges were incendiary: the group, he alleged, was planning to incite a revolution and install a “temporary dictatorship” in order to stamp out Jewish and Communist influence in the United States. Interviewed in his jail cell, the front’s ringleader was unbowed: “All I can say is—long live Christ the King! Down with Communism!” In Nazis of Copley Square, Charles Gallagher provides a crucial missing chapter in the history of the American far right. The men of the Christian Front imagined themselves as crusaders fighting for the spiritual purification of the nation, under assault from godless Communism, and they were hardly alone in their beliefs. The front traced its origins to vibrant global Catholic theological movements of the early twentieth century, such as the Mystical Body of Christ and Catholic Action. The front’s anti-Semitism was inspired by Sunday sermons and by lay leaders openly espousing fascist and Nazi beliefs. Gallagher chronicles the evolution of the front, the transatlantic cloak-and-dagger intelligence operations that subverted it, and the mainstream political and religious leaders who shielded the front’s activities from scrutiny. Nazis of Copley Square is a grim tale of faith perverted to violent ends, and a warning for those who hope to curb the spread of far-right ideologies today.

Download or read book Home Front written by Phyllis Fleming and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: