Class Struggle On The Home Front

Home/Front examines the gendered exploitation of labor in the household from a postmodern Marxian perspective. The authors of this volume use the anti-foundationalist Marxian economic theories first formulated by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff to explore power, domination, and exploitation in the modern household.

New scholarship on World War II continues to broaden our understanding. With each passing year we know more about the triumphs and the tragedies of America’s involvement in the momentous conflict. Tapping into this greater awareness of the accomplishments of both soldiers and civilians and a better recognition of the consequences of decisions made, Allan Winkler presents the third edition of his highly popular series volume. Informed by the latest historical literature and featuring many new thoughtfully chosen photographs, the third edition of Home Front U.S.A. continues to ponder the question of "the good war," the moral implications of the use of the atomic bomb, the implications of expanding wartime roles for women, African Americans, American Jews, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans at the hands of the federal government, and the experiences of the many other people who, though relegated to the fringe of mainstream society, contributed in important ways to the nation's successful prosecution of its greatest challenge.

The poster - inexpensive, colorful, and immediate - was an ideal medium for delivering messages about Americans' duties on the home front during World War II. Design for Victory presents more than 150 of these stunning images - many never reproduced since their first issue - culled from the collections of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. William L. Bird, Jr. and Harry R. Rubenstein delve beneath the surface of these colorful graphics, telling the stories behind their production and revealing how posters fulfilled the goals and needs of their creators. The authors describe the history of how specific posters were conceived and received, focusing on the workings of the wartime advertising profession and demonstrating how posters often reflected uneasy relations between labor and management.

THE STORY: The action is set in a comfortable suburban home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where Bob and Maurine, a fairly well-off middle-aged couple, are living (apparently happily) with their daughter Karen, a graduate student, and their brooding son

"[This book] is the story of what happened in the United States between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day. For those ... who were in this country then, the book will be a trip down memory lane. For others, it will be pure history. For all, it will be a thorough re-creation of the events, sometimes ludicrous and sometimes tragic, and personalities that left their mark upon America during a period of transition and upheaval. V-girls and V-mail, Willow Run and Henry Kaiser, dollar-a-year men and C stickers, Sidney Hillman and Rosie the Riveter, Ernie Pyle and The Voice of the Turtle, Veronica Lake and 'Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree,' blackouts and the internment of the Japanese. These are but a few of the hundreds of phenomena of the American home front during World War II that Richard Lingeman has recaptured. Six years in the research and writing, the book exhibits as sharp an eye for small, revelatory details--civil defense measures in Wyoming, milk shortages in Texas, and one-armed outfielders--as for large and crucial subjects such as the response of industry to war and shifting population patterns that changed the face of the nation. While there is no doubt that [this book] is sheer reading pleasure (just look at the index for all you never knew or have forgotten to remember), there is equally little doubt that it is filled with insights and information that record permanent alterations in the American way of life. The war brought new, if still limited, opportunities to both the Negro and to women, and it is perhaps significant that in 1945 the two groups were thought to be worth almost exactly the same on the labor market. And if the war definitively ended the Depression, it was at the price of the military-industrial complex with which we live today. Thus the book simultaneously reveals the past and does much to explain the present. Ultimately, though, what emerges most clearly is a portrait of everyday life in America in a time of unprecedented national emergency. Predictably enough, there are heroes and villains, excesses and deprivations, valor and foolishness. Seldom has an era been so carefully and vividly brought back to life, and it is all here in a book that is destined to take its place beside Only Yesterday and The Aspirin Age as a classic of significant popular history."--Dust jacket.