Victory City
A History of New York and New Yorkers during World War II
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4.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From John Strausbaugh, author of City of Sedition and The Village, comes the definitive history of Gotham during the World War II era.
New York City during World War II wasn't just a place of servicemen, politicians, heroes, G.I. Joes and Rosie the Riveters, but also of quislings and saboteurs; of Nazi, Fascist, and Communist sympathizers; of war protesters and conscientious objectors; of gangsters and hookers and profiteers; of latchkey kids and bobby-soxers, poets and painters, atomic scientists and atomic spies.
While the war launched and leveled nations, spurred economic growth, and saw the rise and fall of global Fascism, New York City would eventually emerge as the new capital of the world. From the Gilded Age to VJ-Day, an array of fascinating New Yorkers rose to fame, from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes to Joe Louis, to Robert Moses and Joe DiMaggio.
In Victory City, John Strausbaugh returns to tell the story of New York City's war years with the same richness, depth, and nuance he brought to his previous books, City of Sedition and The Village, providing readers with a groundbreaking new look into the greatest city on earth during the most transformative -- and costliest -- war in human history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From teenagers in zoot suits and bobby socks to New York bred Soviet moles infiltrating the Manhattan Project and German U-boats lurking off the city's shoreline, Strausbaugh (City of Sedition: A History of New York City during the Civil War) delivers a lively chronicle of New York City during the 1930s and '40s. Strausbaugh highlights New York's influential role in the war effort due to its sheer size, defense and auxiliary organizations (among them, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and USO), and political and economic clout President Franklin Roosevelt, a native New Yorker, filled his cabinet and administration with influential New Yorkers. Entertaining and episodic, Strausbaugh's work explores the cultural changes precipitated by the rise of women in the workforce; the racial discrimination black service members faced in the military and at home that led to the 1943 Harlem Riot; the corporations and banks that hid under a patriotic front while investing in Hitler's regime; and the New York Jewish community's deep divisions over Roosevelt's slow and ineffective response to the Holocaust. The narrative sweeps in New York City's larger-than-life mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Nazi spies and saboteurs, atomic scientists, poets, and gangsters. This well-informed and vibrant history captures a pivotal era in deep detail.
