Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The American Home Front: 1941-1942
    The American Home Front: 1941-1942
    The American Home Front: 1941-1942
    Audiobook13 hours

    The American Home Front: 1941-1942

    Written by Alistair Cooke

    Narrated by John Byrne Cooke

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In nearly three thousand BBC broadcasts over fifty-eight years, Alistair Cooke reported on America, revealing our country’s complexities and idiosyncrasies to a global audience. He was one of the most widely read and widely heard chroniclers of America - the Twentieth Century’s de Tocqueville.

    Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Alistair Cooke, a newly naturalized American citizen, set out to see his country as it was undergoing monumental change. He wanted to “see what the war had done to people, to the towns I might go through, to some jobs and crops, to stretches of landscape I loved and had seen at peace.” Working throughout the war, Cooke finished The American Home Front as the atomic bomb was being dropped on Hiroshima. His publisher thought there would be little interest in books on the war, so it was stuffed in a closet. It stayed there for almost sixty years, nearly forgotten, until it was unearthed shortly before Cooke’s death in 2004.

    The American Home Front is a fascinating artifact, a charming travelogue, and a sharp portrait that shows America changing from civilian pursuits to military engagement, from the production of consumer goods to materials of war. It is also a unique record of American life. Cooke travels small highways, with their advertising signs and their local typography, in an age before the interstate highway system. He chronicles the regional glories he encounters, elements of long-lost culture such as his beloved soda fountains, and the reactions of the citizens, from indifference to grief, from opportunism to resilience under military threat. Filled with touching personal stories of the effects of war, from a Japanese family facing internment that tries to sell Cooke their car, to the experiences of the unemployed relocating in hopes of jobs in a gunpowder factory, The American Home Front is the work of an experienced, talented journalist; it is intelligent, touching, and funny.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMay 1, 2006
    ISBN9781423321194
    The American Home Front: 1941-1942
    Author

    Alistair Cooke

    Alistair Cooke, KBE (1908–2004), was a legendary British American journalist, television host, and radio broadcaster. He was born in Lancashire, England, and after graduating from the University of Cambridge, was hired as a journalist for the BBC. He rose to prominence for his London Letter reports, broadcast on NBC Radio in America during the 1930s. Cooke immigrated to the United States in 1937. In 1946, he began a tradition that would last nearly six decades—his Letter from America radio appearances on the BBC. Cooke was also beloved as the host of PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre for twenty-one years. He wrote many books, both collections of his Letters from America and other projects. After his death, the Fulbright Alistair Cooke Award in Journalism was established to support students from the United Kingdom seeking to study in the United States, and vice versa.

    Related to The American Home Front

    Related audiobooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Sherman In The Balance

      Dec 15, 2020

      Sherman In The Balance
      9 min read

    • Article

      'Heirs Of The Founders' Profiles The 'Second Generation' Of Great American Leaders

      Nov 13, 2018

      In his latest historical spellbinder, bestselling author and scholar H.W. Brands profiles Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun, as well as the decades leading up to the Civil War.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Tragedy of Edmund Morris

      May 28, 2019

      The Tragedy of Edmund Morris
      5 min read

    • Article

      Haunted

      Dec 24, 2019

      Haunted
      13 min read

    • Article

      Bob Drury & Tom Clavin Forging Washington’s Army

      Mar 5, 2019

      With their 2018 book Valley Forge best-selling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin turn their attention to one of the most underappreciated chapters in American history—the Continental Army’s 1777–78 transformation in that Pennsylvania winter camp. Drur

      6 min read

    • Article

      Tom Dooley, M.d., CIA

      Oct 6, 2020

      Tom Dooley, M.d., CIA
      10 min read

    • Article

      Wilhelm II

      May 13, 2021

      Wilhelm II
      1 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: I Was An Army Grunt At The Pointy End Of The American Spear. But No Longer

      Apr 5, 2019

      I'm one of the lucky ones. Leaving the madness of U.S. Army life with a modest pension and all of my limbs intact feels like a genuine escape. Both the Army and I knew it was time for me to go. I'd tired of carrying water for empire and they'd grown

      3 min read

    • Article

      It Is Finished

      Nov 5, 2020

      It Is Finished
      9 min read

    • Article

      Blood Brothers

      Jan 1, 2019

      Blood Brothers
      8 min read

    • Article

      An Adventurer’s Idol

      Oct 24, 2023

      An Adventurer’s Idol
      6 min read

    • Article

      Arrogant Princes & Autocrats

      Apr 17, 2022

      Arrogant Princes & Autocrats
      2 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Feb 17, 2022

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      4 min read

    • Article

      Turning Point

      May 5, 2020

      Turning Point
      4 min read

    • Article

      Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER

      Mar 16, 2023

      Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
      6 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Oct 1, 2020

      Anniversaries
      5 min read

    • Article

      Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER

      Feb 17, 2022

      Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
      8 min read

    • Article

      Leather Lover

      Aug 22, 2023

      Leather Lover
      4 min read

    • Article

      Alexander Korda: Churchill’s Man in Hollywood

      Jan 28, 2018

      In early 1935, Winston Churchill wrote an urgent letter to the Hungarian-born British film producer Alexander Korda. He had just completed a screenplay entitled The Reign of George V and was anxious that “not another day be lost in the preparation of

      9 min read

    • Article

      Flash Points

      Oct 5, 2021

      Flash Points
      8 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Jun 10, 2021

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Jul 6, 2023

      Anniversaries
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The American Home Front

    4/5

    6 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      The American Home Front was written by Alistair Cooke during World War II, rejected by publishers in 1946, and stowed in a closet until it was unearthed just weeks before the author died in 2005. Born in Britain, naturalized as an American citizen before the war, Mr. Cooke decided to take a trip around the US in 1941 and 1942 to discover how the war affected the country. A miasma of disappointment surrounded me as I read this book, as I was continuously wishing the author had approached his subject in a different way. Rather than concentrating on regular people and their stories, he chose to write long descriptive paragraphs (great for a travelogue) about some of the areas he visited, occasionally interviewing people, then stitching it together with long-winded opini on what he was seeing (great in a memoir) and going off onto tangents that may have pleased him but did little for me, his reader. Granted, he was really writing for my parents (or, rather, his parents’ generation in Britain), but I can’t believe they would have found it any more interesting.I thought some information was curiously missing (like the make of the car he bought in California and traveled in for the rest of his journey and just who the “we” were that he referred to). Some areas, like Chicago, were glossed over in a few paragraphs (why bother?!) He could have concentrated on a few of the more interesting and enlightening areas and not written about The Great Circle Tour. Yes, I did enjoy learning about some of the industries and areas that were affected by the war (who knew there was a great demand for MOHAIR?). I just wanted more. I kept on thinking that if the Internet were available at the time, this book would have made a so-so blog.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Enjoyable but I found the narrator all too easy to tune out while doing beadwork. I had to go back and listen again more than once. It was a wonderful portrait of a moment in time- with any number of fascinating details. Highly recommended for the WWII buffs out there.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Entertaining and insight of American at war.
    • 4/5
      I colorful view of the United States during World War II.