Richard Lingeman

5097. Don't You Know There's A War On? The American Home Front, 1941-1945, by Richard R. Lingeman (read 7 Dec 2013) This excellent book tells of the years of World War II in the United States, and for those of us who lived through the war is filled with nostalgic rememberings, as it tells of war work, scrap drives, rationing, war movies, war songs, etc. I found some chapters very moving, especially those relating to the last months of the war and to FDR's death. There is also humor as the author relates some of the excesses of early war preparation, in such places as Kansas and Wyoming. The idiocy of the Japanese internments is told well. I reflected how the war was easier living on an Iowa farm, where we had little difficulty as to rationing--we raised our own vegetables and fruit and meat--the main rationing concern was as to sugar. This has been a sheerly enjoyable book, which I should have read long ago.… (more)

Nostalgic look at the American home front from Pearl Harbor to 1945. Covers the industrial mobilization for war, rationing and shortages, war nerves, the changing demographics, the propaganda campaign, wartime books, movies, radio, and baseball.

I especially enjoyed the responses of cartoon characters to the war. Joe Palooka and Skeezix joined the army and Barney Google the navy, but Prince Valiant ignored the war, for obvious reasons. And Superman, for reasons not quite so obvious. Dick Tracy did naval intelligence, Mickey Finn joined the coast guard, and Smilin’ Jack the air force. Little Orphan Annie helped on the home front, as did Aunt Fritzi Ritz. And, as any old timer knows, Sad Sack joined the army.

Indexed, with bibliography.… (more)

It's been a long time since I read Mark Schorer's then-definitive biography of Sinclair Lewis, so it's difficult to compare the merits of this exhaustive work with Schorer's. Schorer had the advantage of more immediate sources; Lingeman was at a comparative disadvantage, writing this some 50 years after Lewis' death. But I did learn some things here that I don't think were in the earlier book, and it is undeniably well-written, comprehensive and tinged with interest by Lingeman's willingness to offer his personal evaluations of Lewis' life and work. That said, the book reinforces my view of Sinclair Lewis; that America's first winner of the Nobel Prize for literature was at heart a complex and miserable mess of a human being. Far from a great writer, at his peak he was a consummate observer of American society, and perceptive and courageous enough to hold a revealing mirror up to it. His output of the 1920's was nearly unmatched in literary influence, and "Dodsworth" remains one of my favorite novels. But he was a terribly conflicted and insecure man, by turns generous and loyal, and self-obsessed and unpredictably cruel. I have no doubt that I would find him repellent if I knew him, but the man fascinates me, and it was particularly interesting to me to have read this biography shortly after visiting Lewis' hometown of Sauk Centre and touring his home, museum and gravesite.… (more)