World War II (1931-1945)
“The Second World War presented a mirror to the human condition which blinded anyone who looked into it.” — Norman Mailer, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster” (1957)
Of the endless ocean of books on the Second World War, we have dozens and dozens of new and carefully chosen titles. I define it as beginning with the Japanese Empire’s invasion of Manchuria and ending with not only V-E and V-J Days but also the immediate crises of displaced people, the Soviet Union’s creation of the Iron Curtain, and the growing revelations of the extent of the Holocaust.
In significant ways the Second World War was the defining crucible of the 20th Century. The First World War was prelude, the legacy of the 19th Century’s imperialism, and the Cold War was the sequel. Of the making of books about it there is no end — but the persistence of good research and good writing, and good publication underscores the war’s centrality of the world we live in today and the world our descendents will live in for the foreseeable future.
Gotham at War: A History of New York City from 1933 to 1945
Gotham at War: A History of New York City from 1933 to 1945
The culminating volume in the acclaimed Gotham series, Gotham at War delivers an unforgettable portrait of America's greatest city during history's most catastrophic conflict.
Gotham at War unveils the history of New York and the Second World War, from isolationism and factionalism to crucible of the American effort and the Allied Cause in a total and global war.
Kaleidoscopic and immersive, Gotham at War captures the full spectrum of New York and the war from every possible aspect-social, political, economic, and military. Even before the war had started street battles between New York's homegrown fascists and the workers' movement-allied with immigrants from all over the world and their children in the barrios of Gotham-played prelude. Set in the generation after race "scientists" based in the elite warrens of the Upper East Side championed and then imposed national immigration restriction, Gotham at War sees New Yorkers struggle to shake off the city's eugenic past.
Between 1933 and 1945, the city wrestled with itself, starting from the rise of Hitler through isolationism and growing interventionism; through Pearl Harbor and a full-throated war effort, when millions of American soldiers and sailors and billions of tons of materiel passed through New York's waterfronts to the warfronts. Along the way Mike Wallace's saga traces the transformation of New York, embracing garment workers and skyscrapers; the subway and Wall Street; gangsters and idealists; pols and reformers; nightclubs and boardrooms; Nazi infiltrators and FBI gumshoes; magazines and movies; shuls and cathedrals; every neighborhood, every industry, and all the peoples of the city swept up in a world that had caught fire.
Here is a portrait of a city and a war like no other. Gotham at War traces the transformation of New York from Depression-wracked mother of exiles to a front in the Second World War, and ultimately to the seat of the United Nations and a very contested "capital of the world."