Washington Goes to War
New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. First Ballantine Books Edition, Presumed First Printing. Mass market paperback. xiv, 287, [3] pages. Illustrations. Some cover wear and some page discoloration. Includes Preface, Acknowledgments, Prologue, and a Note on Sources. Chapters include Waiting; The Battle for Washington; Bureaucracies a War; "Locked in Deadly Struggle..."; Boom Town; "Parties for a Purpose": Press Lords and Reporters; Congressional Blues; The Strains of the New; and Endings and Beginnings. Also includes A Note on Sources. The Extraordinary Story of the Transformation of a City and a Nation. David Brinkley has written an impressionist history, comparable to a pointillist painting composed of small points of color that, seen whole, comprise a remarkably truthful record of reality. Though it is today the hub of international affairs and government, Washington, D.C. was once little more than a small Southern town that happened to host our nationally elected officials. Award-winning journalist David Brinkley remembers what it was like--how Washington awoke from its slumber and found itself with a war on its hands. Washington had to print the paper, alphabetize the bureaucracies, host the parties, pitch the propaganda, write the laws, launch the drives, draft the boys, hire the "government girls," and engage in an often hilarious administrative war of words, wit, and even wisdom. David McClure Brinkley (July 10, 1920 – June 11, 2003) was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997. Brinkley received ten Emmy Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Derived from a Kirkus review: A vivid, knowing reconstruction of the sociopolitical changes that convulsed the nation's capital just before and during WW II. Washington was something of a backwater before WW II. Isolationist sentiment remained strong on Capitol Hill, and the listless Southern seat of government was largely content to stick to the undemanding business of administering its bureaucracies. Overtaken by events, however, the city underwent an astonishing transformation that, despite geography, made it the hub of the Allies' deadly struggle against the Axis powers. Although he witnessed much of the dramatic metamorphosis as a young radio reporter, Brinkley rarely intrudes on his anecdotal narrative, which runs from the late 1930's through V-J Day. His lively account nonetheless abounds in telling details that put the chaotic times in clear perspectives. To illustrate, he notes without further comment that the ammunition ostentatiously stacked beside White House antiaircraft batteries was the wrong size--a lapse not discovered until years after the war. In like vein, he observes that when Nazi Germany marched on Poland, effectively transferring leadership of the Western world, District of Columbia residents in general and black in particular were still making do with 15,000 privies. By no coincidence, then, the first lunch-counter sit-ins occurred in wartime Washington. In the meantime, while Congress shambled along its wayward, typically partisan way, armies of dollar-a-year men, academics, nubile secretaries and others recruited or volunteering to support the war effort invaded the city, doubling its population between 1940 and 1945. The new arrivals faced shortages of every conceivable kind--housing, hotel rooms, cigarettes, decent booze, office space, typewriters, even paper. Against the helter-skelter backdrop of a wartime capital, Brinkley offers sharply etched portraits of the notables and lesser lights who were at the heart of the home-front action. In addition to F.D.R., his dramatis personae include the consequential likes of Cissy Patterson (publisher of the Times-Herald), Chester Bowles (who made the Office of Price Administration a viable agency), Beardsley Rural (the Macy's economist who devised tax withholding), Evalyn Walsh MacLean (a celebrated hostess), Drew Pearson, Senator Robert A. Taft, and Sam Rayburn (Speaker of the House). An effective, engrossing evocation of a time and place marked in about equal measure by low comedy and high drama. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Washington, WWII, Segregation, Congress, Demographics, Cissy Paterson, Chester Bowles, Beardsley Rural, Evalyn Walsh MacLean, Drew Person, Robert Taft, Sam Rayburn
ISBN: 0345359798
[Book #82062]
Price: $20.00