V for Victory: America's Home Front During World War II

Aside from the stories my parents told me, this book is probably the closest I'll ever get to experiencing life in America during the early 1940's. It's all here: the music, newspaper headlines, letters home, children's toys, wartime propaganda (including a "Jap Primer"!), rationing, fashions, transportation, movies, and loads and loads of photographs! I also like the fact that it begins with those years before the United States' involvement in the war, and the public's reactions and opinions of the European carnage pre-December 7th, 1941. This is not a disjointed collection of words and pictures thrown together incohesively, but a book that re-creates in all its *glory* the lives and times of our parents and grandparents written by one who was there. During dinnertime on many occasions my mother will tell my children vignettes of her youth during the war, how she and her friends used to collect scraps of metal and rubber, how they would save the grease from meat, of watching the latest war news during movie previews at the show, and of seeing the local boys off to fight in a far off land. And everything she would say is right here in even greater detail in this 'encyclopedia' of the World War II homefront. It's this sort of a book that is needed to be in our educational system - not the politically correct pap written by opinionated saps being shoved down our children's throats today. THIS is how it was. A truly awesome book.

This is an absolutely great book! For those of us who had the incomparable experience of living in WWII wartime America, each page of this remarkable book will cause a jolt.It's all there...with no punches pulled. The Government propaganda machine cranked out media that was aimed at having us hate our Axis enemies. (The same Germany, Italy and Japan that are our friends today.) Yes, the great photos and text cover it all....air raid drills and shelters, Victory Gardens, rationing, civil defense, draft boards, relocation of Japanese, the war plants and manpower. It was a time that the equal opportunity movements for women, African-Americans and the handicapped started to gain steam. World War II brought us out of the Depression, and author Stan Cohen depicts how a sleeping America became an unmatched industrial machine because determination of its WWII work force. Nor does he neglect technologies that were developed in the home front. The computer, television and a multitude of other products were invented or advanced during this period. V for Victory has 408 pages. Each page is remarkable. I recommend this book highly.Martin Davis, Ph.D.

The major fault with this book is its complete lack of design. With hundreds of photos and graphic material it should have been presented in a much more imaginative way.However I found it a fascinating visual record of the war years, though at times it does get a bit overwhelming, do I really need to look at over fifty photos of scrap drives? The text is basically captions and some longer essays. There really should have been an index as well, this is the sort of book readers dip into and refer back to.As well as the photos there is plenty of printed ephemera and these were the items that intriqued me most. The chapter on Food for Victory has a seed packet, recipe books, posters, a cover to a home canning book, a lunch bag, a packet of waxed paper, the front of a newspaper produced by Kraft cheese, a Victory garden book cover and photos of folk digging their gardens.A lot of everyday printed items are shown in a similar book, 'Home Front America' by Robert Heide and John Gilman, with a lot more text than 'V for Victory' it covers the same years from the viewpoint of popular culture.

We are writing a journal of the "Old Days" for our children and grandchildren. We needed our memory refreshed on WWII rationing and other patriotic actions. Stan Cohen had compiled just what we needed. (Note: Amazing how "politically incorrect" we were in those days!!!)