World War II Database

A general history of the United States from 1929 to 1945, David Kennedy's Freedom from Fear provided a birds eye view of the political and economic landscape of the country, and how it emerged to become a world power through the WW2 era. I gained a sense that this Pulitzer Prize winner targeted general readers who might or might not already had exposure to this time period, as many topics were discussed clearly with non-technical terminology. While the broad scope necessarily meant that he could only scratch the surface in many areas, the author successfully linked historical events into a cause-and-effect evolutionary path that shaped America. Since I reviewed this book from the perspective of a WW2 history enthusiast, I paid more attention to the latter portions of the book. I found the text to be, rather expectedly, American-centric and lacked depth, but those shortcomings did not take away from the fact that the book was a good primer for the 15-year period that it covered.

I had reviewed this title in its audio book format. Tom Weiner did a fine job reading the book.

For WW2DB readers, Freedom from Fear would be one of those "on the fence" books. While it did not dive deeply into the military matters of WW2, its broad perspective could provide some background on the "how" and "why" American leaders made the decisions that they did during war time.