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Taking Command: The American Experience of World War Two and the Fight for Democracy
Not yet published
Expected 20 Jul 27From one of the country's most distinguished military historians, a fresh Big Picture history of the Second World War from the American perspective, illuminating how the country went from avoiding to accepting and then to leading the fight for democracy in the greatest conflict in history--and in the process changed forever by it.
In the minds of most Americans, the Second World War remains not only the "good war" but an inevitable one, as if the country's predominant place in world affairs was somehow preordained. As Tami Davis Biddle shows in Taking Command, this was anything but the case. Vowing never to relive the disaster of the First World War, Americans resisted looking beyond their borders, its leaders acceding to deep-seated aversion to European adventurism and imperial ambition. The Depression deepened their inward gaze. Never again would they be embroiled in someone else's struggle. As turmoil in Europe and the Far East grew, Franklin Roosevelt gradually expanded the country's horizons, still bowing to pressure to restrict America's role to that of an "arsenal of democracy." Pearl Harbor shattered any illusion of separation. The United States was fully in the fight, suddenly scrambling to meet the challenges--political, social, economic, cultural--the war effort demanded, taking an all-volunteer American Army and shaping it into a fighting force that could not only counter fascism but triumph over it.
Brazenly ambitious and sweeping, Taking Command covers every aspect of the build-up to war and then, once it erupted, how Americans, civilians at home and the soldiers in the field, lived it. Based upon a lifetime of writing about the Second World War and teaching it to generations of students at the Army War College, Biddle's book encompasses grand strategy, command leadership, civil-military relations, war production and manpower, weapons technology and innovation, combat journalism, and the psychology of war itself. In the process, she illuminates how Americans launched themselves into the fight for democracy and were in the process transformed by it.
In the minds of most Americans, the Second World War remains not only the "good war" but an inevitable one, as if the country's predominant place in world affairs was somehow preordained. As Tami Davis Biddle shows in Taking Command, this was anything but the case. Vowing never to relive the disaster of the First World War, Americans resisted looking beyond their borders, its leaders acceding to deep-seated aversion to European adventurism and imperial ambition. The Depression deepened their inward gaze. Never again would they be embroiled in someone else's struggle. As turmoil in Europe and the Far East grew, Franklin Roosevelt gradually expanded the country's horizons, still bowing to pressure to restrict America's role to that of an "arsenal of democracy." Pearl Harbor shattered any illusion of separation. The United States was fully in the fight, suddenly scrambling to meet the challenges--political, social, economic, cultural--the war effort demanded, taking an all-volunteer American Army and shaping it into a fighting force that could not only counter fascism but triumph over it.
Brazenly ambitious and sweeping, Taking Command covers every aspect of the build-up to war and then, once it erupted, how Americans, civilians at home and the soldiers in the field, lived it. Based upon a lifetime of writing about the Second World War and teaching it to generations of students at the Army War College, Biddle's book encompasses grand strategy, command leadership, civil-military relations, war production and manpower, weapons technology and innovation, combat journalism, and the psychology of war itself. In the process, she illuminates how Americans launched themselves into the fight for democracy and were in the process transformed by it.
704 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication July 20, 2027
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