★★★★★ 5
He explains how the Rosie the riveter myth is pretty much a fabrication and how America's approach to manufacturing ...
Format: Kindle
Trying to distill WWll down to a little over 400 pages is a Herculean task but Mr. Kennedy does a serviceable job. He provides thumbnail sketches of the major players' personalities and tics. He does an admirable job of jumping back and forth between the European and Pacific theaters of operation, always keeping in mind America's POV in explaining how FDR and his staff dealt with their fractious, troublesome allies. He explains how the Rosie the riveter myth is pretty much a fabrication and how America's approach to manufacturing was able to out produce the German mode of war production: America going for Quantity vs. the German fixation with Quality. Lots interesting information and facts. There are areas where I thought he could have used more depth such as the death of FDR (probably no more than two pages.if that); Mussolini and Hitler's last hours are given mere paragraphs; Churchill being voted out of office just months shy of victory in Europe is given maybe two paragraphs and while he mentions how Tibetts went to the airplane factory to pick the future Enola Gay off the assembly line he gives short shrift the immensely expensive and technically complex challenge of building the A-bomb. Nor does Mr. Kennedy mention that when HST hinted to Stalin that America had an powerful new weapon Stalin was all ready aware of the activities going on at Trinity and of the Manhattan Project. Mr. Kennedy doesn't offer any new information or insights but this is a good, one-book overview, of the war.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2014
