A Nation Forged in War: Book Signing

Friday, June 11, 2010

Book Signing

Here is the announcement from a Kansas City area Barnes & Noble:

A Nation Forged in War

Author Signing

Military history buffs are in for a real treat. Author and history professor Thomas Bruscino will be here discussing and signing A Nation Forged in War. This groundbreaking work outlines the social and cultural impact of the World War II years.

Sunday June 13, 2010 2:00 PM

Zona Rosa
8625 Northwest Prairie View Rd Spac, Kansas City, MO 64153, 816-505-3355

Please pass on the word.

Update: The signing went very well, so thanks to all who made it out. If you couldn't be there but are still interested, here's the Barnes & Noble page for the book, and here is Amazon.

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Description

World War II shaped the United States in profound ways, and this new book—the first in the Legacies of War series—explores one of the most significant changes it fostered: a dramatic increase in ethnic and religious tolerance. A Nation Forged in War is the first full-length study of how large-scale mobilization during the Second World War helped to dissolve long-standing differences among white soldiers of widely divergent backgrounds.

Never before or since have so many Americans served in the armed forces at one time: more than 15 million donned uniforms in the period from 1941 to 1945. Thomas Bruscino explores how these soldiers’ shared experiences—enduring basic training, living far from home, engaging in combat—transformed their views of other ethnic groups and religious traditions. He further examines how specific military policies and practices worked to counteract old prejudices, and he makes a persuasive case that throwing together men of different regions, ethnicities, religions, and classes not only fostered a greater sense of tolerance but also forged a new American identity. When soldiers returned home after the war with these new attitudes, they helped reorder what it meant to be white in America.

Using the presidential campaigns of Al Smith in 1928 and John F. Kennedy in 1960 as bookend events, Bruscino notes a key change in religious bias. Smith’s defeat came at the end of a campaign rife with anti-Catholic sentiment; Kennedy’s victory some three decades later proved that such religious bigotry was no longer an insurmountable obstacle. Despite such advances, Bruscino notes that the growing broad-mindedness produced by the war had limits: it did not extend to African Americans, whose own struggle for equality would dramatically mark the postwar decades.

Extensively documented, A Nation Forged in War is one of the few books on the social and cultural impact of the World War II years. Scholars and students of military, ethnic, social, and religious history will be fascinated by this groundbreaking new volume.