Kenneth S. Davis (1912–1999)

Picked up on a whim on a trip to Richland WA to see the Hanford Reactor National Park, found at Xenophile Books.

I recognized the author as a fellow Kansan, but didn't realize he also wrote on Eisenhower. May have to look that one up.

This is a solid one-volume account of the American aspects of WW2. Davis tends towards purple prose, and reads as a period piece of the post-war era

Still glad I browsed my way to it on the shelf.

Real good stuff. It took a long time for me to read it, in the "dipping" way that I do, but I never lost track of the story. Mr Davis has crafted this history very well. Be aware though, that it does finish at 1928. It doesn't get into FDR's governorship or presidency.

PREFACE: This is a book about the American experience of World War II. It is not designed to be a formal academic history, though every effort has been made to assure its factual accuracy. Rather, its essential purpose is literary in that it attempts to rescue from the erosions and abstractions of Time something of what Webster’s Dictionary, in the definition of “experience,” calls the “actual living through an event or events; actual enjoyment or suffering.”
An account of America's show more participation in WW II. The significant events and personalities of the campaign. Some chapters include Book 1: The road to war. To the edge of the abyss ; In the valley of indecision ; The undeclared war ; To the day of infamy -- Book 2: The turning tide. Pacific defeat and global strategy ; The heroism and economics of war ; Crisis and turning point in the Pacific ; A dangerous quarrel among friends ; The emergence of Eisenhower ; The end of the beginning -- Book 3: Flood tide of victory. Atomistic, organismic ; Preludes to the final assaults ; Overlord triumphant -- Book 4: The tragic triumph. The edge of triumph ; To the end in Germany ; To the end in Japan. show less

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