Sanson provides little insight into the political culture and structures of power that made Louisiana such a travesty of democracy and good government. Only in the second half of the book does Sanson come to grips with how World War II directly affected various aspects of Louisiana's society. Chapters on education, agriculture, industry, and civilian life offer a useful overview of the home front. However, whereas the political chapters offer rather too much detail, the social history chapters provide too little. Sanson devotes a mere thirteen pages, for example, to the problems and activities of the state's black population.
Women also receive short shrift.
A final chapter recounts how Louisianians reacted to the advent of peace and how they envisaged the postwar world. Yet the changes triggered by the war, he admits, had not wrought a fundamental transformation. The book's first half, however, will appeal only to die-hard fans of Louisiana politics. Instead of using the war as his defining theme, Sanson has utilized it mainly as a chronological period. The result is a book that is neither fish nor fowl and that fails to live up to the promise of its title.