Here are 100 books that Growing American Rubber fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a scholar, I take pleasure in developing novel interpretations and arguments and persuading colleagues and readers of their merits. Over the past two decades, I’ve advanced a new macroeconomic narrative for the United States. In earlier publications, I argued that the Depression years were the most technologically progressive of the twentieth century. Behind the backdrop of double-digit unemployment, potential output grew rapidly, an increase that helped enable the country to produce prodigious amounts of WWII armaments. It also, I maintain, established most of the supply side foundations for the golden age (1948-73). The conventional wisdom tends instead to credit U.S. postwar economic dominance to experience manufacturing military durables.
The book gives great insight into the role of organized efforts at persuasion in establishing and reinforcing much of what we think we know about mobilization for the war.
Business wanted credit for the success of war production, even though most of it was achieved in government owned, government operated (GOGO) or government owned, contractor operated (GOCO) plants. The public sector played a much larger role in planning, directing, and controlling the mobilization effort than business wished the American public to acknowledge.
During World War II, the United States helped vanquish the Axis powers by converting its enormous economic capacities into military might. Producing nearly two-thirds of all the munitions used by Allied forces, American industry became what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "the arsenal of democracy." Crucial in this effort were business leaders. Some of these captains of industry went to Washington to coordinate the mobilization, while others led their companies to churn out weapons. In this way, the private sector won the war-or so the story goes.
Based on new research in business and military archives, Destructive Creation shows that…
As a scholar, I take pleasure in developing novel interpretations and arguments and persuading colleagues and readers of their merits. Over the past two decades, I’ve advanced a new macroeconomic narrative for the United States. In earlier publications, I argued that the Depression years were the most technologically progressive of the twentieth century. Behind the backdrop of double-digit unemployment, potential output grew rapidly, an increase that helped enable the country to produce prodigious amounts of WWII armaments. It also, I maintain, established most of the supply side foundations for the golden age (1948-73). The conventional wisdom tends instead to credit U.S. postwar economic dominance to experience manufacturing military durables.
Iconic images of the Willow Run plant, built by the U.S. government but operated by Ford, have probably done more than anything else to cement in the minds of scholars and the public the standard narratives about mobilization for the Second World War.
In fact, Willow Run was a questionable success, employing at its peak barely 40 percent of the headcount for which it was designed. It eventually relied extensively on subcontracting, which Ford had intended to avoid. And, because Ford insisted on freezing designs for substantial periods, Willow Run B-24s had to be flown to government modification centers before they could be used in combat.
As late as 1943, the Truman Committee was threatening to transfer the plant to another contractor because Ford’s performance had been so abysmal. But if Ford’s record as a builder of bombers was mixed, there is no question that the company operated a world-class…
As a scholar, I take pleasure in developing novel interpretations and arguments and persuading colleagues and readers of their merits. Over the past two decades, I’ve advanced a new macroeconomic narrative for the United States. In earlier publications, I argued that the Depression years were the most technologically progressive of the twentieth century. Behind the backdrop of double-digit unemployment, potential output grew rapidly, an increase that helped enable the country to produce prodigious amounts of WWII armaments. It also, I maintain, established most of the supply side foundations for the golden age (1948-73). The conventional wisdom tends instead to credit U.S. postwar economic dominance to experience manufacturing military durables.
This is a classic book on economic mobilization for the Second World War.
The range of Milward’s scholarship is impressive, he has thought deeply about important questions, and he is not afraid to take positions on controversial issues.
It’s relatively weaker on U.S. mobilization, accepting much of the received wisdom, and acknowledges the scarcity of available materials for the Soviet Union and Italy at the time he wrote. But it is useful in putting the U.S. effort in context, and particularly helpful in providing comparative details on the British and German efforts.
As a scholar, I take pleasure in developing novel interpretations and arguments and persuading colleagues and readers of their merits. Over the past two decades, I’ve advanced a new macroeconomic narrative for the United States. In earlier publications, I argued that the Depression years were the most technologically progressive of the twentieth century. Behind the backdrop of double-digit unemployment, potential output grew rapidly, an increase that helped enable the country to produce prodigious amounts of WWII armaments. It also, I maintain, established most of the supply side foundations for the golden age (1948-73). The conventional wisdom tends instead to credit U.S. postwar economic dominance to experience manufacturing military durables.
The historiography of the Second World War is littered with stylized facts which are either wrong or only partly true.
One is that the U.S. economy was almost completely demilitarized during the 1930s. This is largely true insofar as ground and air forces are concerned. It was not true for the Navy. As a former undersecretary of the Navy Roosevelt had a soft spot for sea power. So did important leaders in the legislature.
The two Vinson-Trammel Acts passed in the 1930s allowed the US to build up to treaty limits. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, U.S. naval power ranked only slightly behind that of the Royal Navy, and ahead of the Japanese (although not in the Pacific).
Moreover, the U.S. possessed an industrial infrastructure and an experienced workforce in both government and private shipyards that was capable of rapidly building multiple ships. Heinrich provides an excellent…
I spent more than five years researching and writing a book about the Japanese submarine force during World War II—a topic virtually untouched by western historians. My research took me to Japan where I interviewed surviving members of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Sixth Fleet—its submarine branch. These men told incredible stories of what it was like to serve aboard a Japanese sub during World War II; stories filled with courage, fear, pathos, and humor revealing the universality of the human condition. I remained moved by them to this day.
Undersea Victory is the definitive history of submarine warfare in the Pacific during World War II. Holmes was a giant in the field and really knows his stuff. You’ll come away having a much greater appreciation for how sub combat operations were conducted both by the U.S. and Japan. Importantly, Holmes doesn’t hesitate to tell you the good and the bad regardless of which side he’s writing about. No sub enthusiast’s library is complete without it.
History has always been a strong part of me since I can remember. My heart has always laid in reading, studying, researching, and writing about it, and World War II history is a large part of that. When writing about World War II, I like to visit topics that relate to the everyday person, not well-known generals and admirals. I like to interview people about their experiences and write their stories, what they saw, lived through, witnessed. Both of my books are based upon this concept, how everyday people lived their lives during World War II.
Last Man Outis the true account of a U.S. Marine who surrendered to the Japanese on the Philippine Island of Corregidor. I find this book and its account very interesting because Ed Babler was at the very same POW camp on the Island of Palawan during the time that Glenn McDole was and only escaped being murdered by the Japanese with the bulk of the rest of the Marines there due to having been injured and transferred off prior to the massacre. Last Man Out tells the harrowing account of the massacre and how McDole was able to escape, one of the very few to do so.
On December 14, 1944, Japanese soldiers massacred 139 of 150 American POWs. This biography tells the story of Glenn (""Mac"") McDole, one of eleven young men who escaped and the last man out of Palawan Prison Camp 10A. Beginning on December 8, 1941, at the U.S. Navy Yard barracks at Cavite, the story of this young lowan soldier continues through the fighting on Corregidor, the capture and imprisonment by the Japanese Imperial Army in May 1942, Mac's entry into the Palawan prison camp in the Philippines on August 12, 1942, the terrible conditions he and his comrades endured in the…
I spent more than five years researching and writing a book about the Japanese submarine force during World War II—a topic virtually untouched by western historians. My research took me to Japan where I interviewed surviving members of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Sixth Fleet—its submarine branch. These men told incredible stories of what it was like to serve aboard a Japanese sub during World War II; stories filled with courage, fear, pathos, and humor revealing the universality of the human condition. I remained moved by them to this day.
Hashimoto was the Japanese sub captain of the I-58, who sank the USS Indianapolisshortly after it delivered the atomic bomb in the closing days of World War II. The story of the Indianapolis has been told in several excellent books including, “In Harms Way” and “Fatal Voyage” as well as the movie, “Jaws,” but never from the Japanese point of view. How Hashimoto and his crew survived the war is integral to this story which makes The Hunt for Red October seem like child’s play. And it’s all true!
What happened to Japan’s submarines and what sort of fight did they put up?
As far as Japan was concerned, the recent war was waged according to a rigid strategy. There was no detailed operational planning. It was a fight in which science had been ignored. In such circumstances the submarine, always highly vulnerable unless used intelligently, was inevitably sacrificed. Throughout the war the whole submarine fleet was in reality a special attack force in which, in the absence of scientific weapons, the crews were just so much human ammunition. Today we hear much about rearmament. If money is to…
My first novel Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain was a collage novel; an interweaving of several voices in order to create a composite portrait of the city of Salisbury, which told several stories as a way of revealing more of the life of that place. Since then I’ve written three more novels, all of them interested in the effects of using different voices to tell different parts of the story. I think that polyphony makes for great books, and these are four examples of that—different ways of weaving multiple tales together.
Calvino, like Perec, was an experimental novelist, interested in imposing games and rules on what he created. Here, he took the convention of the short story collection and used it to dramatise the arrival of the twentieth century into rural Italy—the machine age, but also the fascist age, and the consuming fires of the Second World War. The incremental tension that comes from time passing is a powerful reading experience.
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
When I was a teen, I had zero aspirations to become a writer. I didn’t discover my passion for writing until I was thirty! But once I started writing, it was these books and the way they made me feel that I drew on. I wanted strong heroines that I wanted to be—and be friends with. I wanted a slow burn, skin-tingling romance with a lot of push and pull. I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. To go on a quest. To feel victorious. And it is my hope that I can give my readers all the feels these books gave me.
I devoured everything in the Sweet Valley world as a teen, though I was more into Sweet Valley Twins than Sweet Valley High for some reason. Maybe it’s because I liked the twins’ innocence, and the high school drama was too much (or too relatable!) to me. I like to escape to a happy ending! And in complete seriousness, I debated naming my daughter Lila because I didn’t want her to be associated with mean girl Lila Flower. In the end, I named her Delilah (Lilah—with an h!—for short) and that eased my worries.
At any rate, I’ll read a family saga any day. And we’ve established that I love historical romance and costumes, so give me all the Wakefield history.
I fell in love with historical fiction when I was a child. Adventurous tales—especially if they had swordplay in them! And I was fascinated by young people having to choose whether to stand up for what they believed in or run away. Ordinary folk are forced by circumstances—and villains—to do the extraordinary. I empathized and felt like I could be one of them. So when I came to write, I wanted to tell those kinds of stories. I eventually realized what I wrote was 'the intimate epic'—showing how the minor historical players can have a major effect.
This book takes the lives of very ordinary Canadians and throws them into the maelstrom of war. I love that it carefully sets up a world few know about—Toronto in the 1930s—and shows the ambiguity of the times, how anti-Semitism was at home as well as across the water in Europe.
I so enjoyed the Romeo and Juliet love affair at the novel's heart, and I was moved by the trials love is subjected to—as well as shocked by excellent descriptions of war's brutality.
Inspired by a little-known chapter of World War II history, a young Protestant girl and her Jewish neighbour are caught up in the terrible wave of hate sweeping the globe on the eve of war in this powerful love story that’s perfect for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
If you’re reading this letter, that means I’m dead. I had obviously hoped to see you again, to explain in person, but fate had other plans.
1933
At eighteen years old, Molly Ryan dreams of becoming a journalist, but instead she spends her days working any job…
