The United States and the Second World War - (World War II: The Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension) by G Kurt Piehler & Sidney Pash (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In this compelling book, G. Kurt Piehler and Sidney Pash bring together a collection of essays offering a fresh examination of American participation in the Second World War, including a long overdue reconsideration of such seminal topics as the forces leading the United States to enter World War II, the role of the American military in the Allied victory, and war-time planning for the postwar world, but also tackle new inquiries into life on the home front and America's commemoration of one of the most controversial and climatic events of the war-the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In this compelling book, G. Kurt Piehler and Sidney Pash bring together a collection of essays offering a fresh examination of American participation in the Second World War, including a long overdue reconsideration of such seminal topics as the forces leading the United States to enter World War II, the role of the American military in the Allied victory, and war-time planning for the postwar world, but also tackle new inquiries into life on the home front and America's commemoration of one of the most controversial and climatic events of the war-the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. These outstanding historians cover crucial moments such as: Franklin D. Roosevelt's pivotal, if at times indecisive, role in leading the United States The miscalculation of Japanese intentions by American diplomats and the failure of deterrence in preventing war in the Pacific The experiences and contributions of conscientious objectors to American society in this time of total war The decision of the United States to fight with an ineffective battle tank at the expense of American lives The Coast Guard's contribution to the D-Day Landing How elite foreign policy organizations prior to V-J Day sought to influence American occupation policies regarding Japan With these essays and much more, The United States in the Second World War is sure to prove a classic to World War II buffs.

Review Quotes

One of the major strengths of the book lies in its reexamination of well-worn topics. . . The book offers snippets of topics one might not get without reading a specializes book on a very narrow aspect of the war.---Michaella Marino, Hastings College, --H-Net Reviews

This volume of essays on the US in World War II provides a good balance between the coming of war, the waging of war, and the conflict's aftermath. Little-known sources and original vantage points ensure that anyone interested in this seismic conflict will find something new to ponder.-----Peter Schrijvers, author of Liberators: The Allies and Belgian Society, 1944-1945

About the Author

G. Kurt Piehler is author of Remembering War the American Way (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995; reprint ed., 2004), author of World War II (American Soldiers' Lives Series, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007), and co-editor of Major Problems in American Military History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). He is consulting editor for the Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) and associate editor of Americans at War: Society, Culture, and the Homefront (New York: Macmillan Reference/Gale, 2005). His articles have appeared in the History of Education Quarterly, Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries, and the anthology Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). As founding director (1994-98) of the Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II, Piehler conducted more than 200 interviews with veterans of this conflict.

Sidney Pash is an assistant professor of history at Fayetteville State University, where he teaches courses in U.S., world, and East Asian history. He earned his Ph.D. in 2001 from Rutgers University, where he specialized in interwar U.S.-Japanese diplomatic relations. His most recent works have appeared in the Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians, The New England Journal of History, and in Jose´ de Arimate´ia da Cruz, Becky K. da Cruz, and Andrew J. Dowdle, eds., American Politics: Transformation and Change (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 2004).