num_pages: 936
description: Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This book tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike.Freedom From Fear explores how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could.Both comprehensive and colorful, this account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War, reveals a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed.
language: English
title: Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
titlecomplete: Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
characters: Charles Lindbergh, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harold L. Ickes, Henry L. Stimson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, Huey Long, Harry Hopkins, Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover
genres: United States, History, World War II, Economics, American History, The United States Of America, War, American, Nonfiction, Politics
ratings_count: 5077
series: The Oxford History of the United States
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: History, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Francis Parkman Prize, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: California Book Award
category: Nonfiction (Gold), awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Ambassador Book Award
category: American Studies
publisher: Oxford University Press, USA