The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the world's history. The United States had to fight a war across two oceans and three continents--and to do so, it had to build and equip a military that was all but nonexistent before the war began. Never in the nation's history did it have to create, outfit, transport, and supply huge armies, navies, and air forces on so many distant and disparate fronts. The Axis powers might have fielded better-trained soldiers, better weapons, and better tanks and aircraft, but they could not match American productivity. The United States buried its enemies in aircraft, ships, tanks, and guns; in this sense, American industry and American workers, won World War II. The scale of the effort was titanic, and the result historic. Not only did it determine the outcome of the war, but it transformed the American economy and society. Maury Klein's A Call to Arms is the definitive narrative history of this epic struggle--told by one of America's greatest historians of business and economics--and renders the transformation of America with a depth and vividness never available before.

American women did more than pursue roles as soldiers, doctors, and nurses during World War I. Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War reveals women's motivations for fighting for full citizenship rights both on and off the battlefield. The war provided chances for women to participate in the military, but also in other male-dominated career paths. Intense discussions of rape, methods of protecting women, and proper gender roles abound as Kimberly Jensen draws from rich case studies to show how female thinkers and activists wove wartime choices into long-standing debates about woman suffrage and economic parity. The war created new urgency in these debates, and Jensen forcefully presents the case of women participants and activists: women's involvement in the obligation of citizens to defend the state validated their right of full female citizenship.

Excerpt from Mobilizing America's Resources for the War, Vol. 73: Annals, July, 1918 In this volume trill be found a collection of papers, written by men and women occupying commanding positions in their own subjects, on some of the most important questions now before the American people. It is an obvious impossibility to include every question of present-day importance. No apology is offered, therefore, for the absence of many subjects which might well have been included. It was the thought of the editor in charge of this volume that the topics selected bore a definite relation to each other and to the national situation. In this foreword, which is my contribution to the volume, I wish to say a few things from the standpoint of the teacher. Let me begin by calling attention to the fact that there has been a marvelous change in our general program of education. I am not thinking now of our formal educational institutions, for most of our education we get outside of the schoolroom. What I have in mind is the fact that primitive man got most of his training through the ear, whereas modern man gets his training largely through the eye. This contrast has been recognised in many quarters. Verbal promises have not been considered as binding as written. Direct evidence of the eye-witness is more accurate than the story of one whose information has come through the ear. Although in the early days the written word was invested with a semi-sacred character and in spite of the fact that the average man today has learned to read, the critical factors have not been developed to an adequate degree. Enormous masses of printed material now greet us and we lack the ability to discriminate between that which is good and that which is bad. From many standpoints war is a conflict of ideals rather than a clash of people and of arms. It turns on our standards of life, on the things which we want, the things for which we will fight and for which we will die. It is now clear that the present conflict is primarily between democracy and oligarchy, between the people who are seeking to develop themselves as they think best and other people who are submitting to overhead control, exerted primarily in the interests of the few. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.