Wartime America

October 2, 1996
In a brief but sweeping summation of the ways in which WWII affected the nation's course and character, Jeffries, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, examines the conventional wisdom that the war was a watershed in the country's history that established the U.S. as a world economic and political power, expanded federal power at home, gave impetus to the drives for civil liberties and women's rights and laid the basis for decades of prosperity. Among social changes were increased divorce and juvenile delinquency, displaced small farmers and businessmen, a new reign of bureaucracies and the growth of the sunbelt. Jeffries argues that many of these changes were already in the making and not solely attributable to the war. In a style accessible to students and others new to this historical debate, Jeffries offers a good synthesis of arguments. Ultimately, he considers the "watershed" notion as an oversimplification of enormously complex factors that now distinguish the nation from its prewar past.