War, Peace, and All That Jazz 1918-1945 (History of Us)

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Summary: The Great Depression and World War II covered in one volume
Review: "War, Peace, and All That Jazz" is the ninth and second to last volume in Joy Hakim's series A History of US, and it covers a lot of ground. It starts with the end of the First World War and ends with the end of the Second World War. In between it throws in the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the New Deal. Even though it starts on November 11, 1918, Hakim sets up this book as covering the start of a new century, establishing the idea that after World War I everything was different. The preface even underscores the point with a photograph showing a public gathering in Munich on August 1, 1914 when a crowd cheered Germany's decision to go to war; among those photographed in the mob in an enlarged circle was a smiling mustached 25-year-old Austrian watercolor artist named Adolf Hitler.

This volume basically breaks down into three main sections. The first deals with the complete transformation of the United States after World War I, with Prohibition, Women's Suffrage, and the Red Scare. The Scopes "Monkey Trial" gets an extended sidebar and chapters are devoted to both Babe Ruth and the Negro Leagues (with references to Jesse Owens and Joe Louis as well). Modern technology is represented by the achievements of Edwin Hubbel, Albert Einstein, Robert Goddard, and Charles Lindbergh. The second section sets up "The Prosperity Balloon" that popped when the Stock Market crashed. Having established the problem, Hakim presents Franklin AND Eleanor Roosevelt as the solutions, devoting a half dozen chapters to each of them before FDR runs for the White House.

The final section deals with World War II, starting with the idea of Hitler, Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and even America's Father Coughlin, as 20th-Century monsters. Hakin deals with the Nazi's Final Solution to exterminate the Jews in Europe and the scientists who warned FDR of the threat of Germany developing the atomb bomb, before Pearl Harbor draws the United States into the war. While dealing with the high points of the two-ocean war, Hakim also devotes chapters to the interment of Japanese-Americans as "Forgetting the Constitution," and the death of FDR before final victory. After the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan and the arrival of peace, the final chapter, "Picturing History," ends the book with works of art including paintings by Edward Hooper, Georgia O'Keefe, Joseph Stella, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and others.

In "A Note from the Author" Hakim talks about the first half of the 20th century in terms of the famous opening lines of "A Tale of Two Cities," where Charles Dickens declares: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." The emphasis here is on the idea that there are lessons to be learned from the horrible things that happened during this period by the young students reading this book today.

This series remains ideally suited for children who are being home schooled because Hakim brings the same sort of involvement to her historical narrative that you would want to see provided by a teacher in a classroom. This book pays as much attention to Louis Armstrong's jazz as it does to Babe Ruth's home runs and consistently relates things back to the thesis that these three decades full of optimism and despair, progress and Depression, and war, peace and all that jazz, forever changed the United States. In response to the twin challengs of the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin Roosevelt essentially set the stage for the United States that emerged in the second half of the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best History Books I've Read
Review: "War, Peace, and All that Jazz" was one of the best history books I've ever read. It has a good approach of talking about things like the Stock Market Crash without seeming boring, and actually goes into more details than many other History books I've read. It also has really good pictures of everything from Babe Ruth to Charles Lindbergh to World War two. I really liked this book and want to keep it, even though I orignally bought it only for a college term paper.

Rating:
Summary: Buyer Beware
Review: I doubt there's any US History textbooks more excitingly written for kids age 9-12 than Joy Hakim's. (This series is the one used in one of the best private schools in Silicon Valley.) They're glossy and beautiful, and well-nigh irresistible. What an incredible shame. What's the problem? The problem is they contain a version of history so slanted as to amount to an utterly shameless propagandizing of children. I'm a liberal atheist, but, really, these books should be sealed into a time capsule, to entertain future historians.

I assume Hakim simply doesn't know any better, but even a Marxist with a PhD in American History would blush a little to discover that a child reading this series would never suspect that close to 100 million innocent men, women, and children died under the yoke of socialist regimes, nor that a third of the world was plunged into an unnecessary grinding poverty for decades. On the other hand, they will learn, as they should, that National Socialism murdered six million innocents, and that the Ku Klux Klan 'grew hugely' in the 1920s. But they won't learn that any other serious totalitarian movements also grew hugely in the 1920s, or that five million innocents died under the rule of Lenin's first experiment in socialism in the 1920s.

On the contrary, all anti-Communism in the twentieth century is presented as nothing better than a witch-hunt. Indeed, anti-communism is literally referred to as a 'witch-hunt,' several times. Come on. So, was the fight against Hitler's National Socialism a 'witch-hunt'? Why such a palpable double standard for twin evils? Hakim teaches children that while National Socialism was indeed a real and present danger, and even worth waging an unprecedented World War to fight it, on the other hand, international socialism, or Communism, was, as she tells it, never any real danger to Americans.

For instance, there's a chapter on the HUAC hearings in which McCarthy is referred to as a 'liar' about a half a dozen times. The chapter literally begins with the opening sentence "Joe McCarthy was a liar." Sure, he's controversial, but the latest research by historians just doesn't back up Hakim's wild-eyed account of liberal anti-socialism in America as nothing better than a nefarious 'witch-hunt' conducted by 'liars' and oppressors. Totalitarian Communist Lillian Hellman is profiled as a hero, and the overall impression is given that none of these people really were Communists, but, instead, were all just as falsely accused as the supposed 'witches' of Salem.

This conclusion is then used to prove the statement that Americans are a fundamentally paranoid people, who basically lose their marbles very once in a while. (See book "Not Without Honor." on McCarthy and PBS documentary on Salem to find out why even Salem wasn't actually paranoia after all, but a toxic crop of moldy rye.)