Review of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (Paperback)

No Ordinary Time is a wonderfully well written biography which tells the story of "Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt -- The Home Front in World War II." Doris Kearns Goodwin has made a number of choices to tell herbiographical story with deceptive simplicity. I personally don't think thebook quite manages to completely encompass "The Home Front in WorldWar II" along the way, and I probably didn't want it to; instead ittells the story of the war through the Roosevelts' fascinating circle ofWhite House "family" members, with broader historical themestouching on that story.

The personal story works. I've never read quitethis sort of parallel biography before. In a lot of ways the relationshipbetween FDR and his astonishingly complex, compassionate wife makes aperfect lens through which to view the times. Goodwin has plenty of chancesto let Eleanor's various interests touch on different aspects of Americanlife; hardly anything escapes the first lady's list of interests andcauses, so there's no strain to include anything, that's for sure.

Isometimes found myself, though, wishing the emphasis was more squarely onbiography proper. Four or five times in reading the book, I becamemomentarily bogged down in passages involving, say, big picture statistics,and wanted to concentrate on the motives and feelings of Eleanor andFranklin again. In particular, Eleanor's various interests often serve tointroduce some new social issue, and I wanted to really understand *her*appreciation of things rather than reading a set of statistics she wouldn'thave had access to anyway.

Honestly, though, No Ordinary Time breatheslife into these people. You come away from the book understanding that theycould be huge, monumental figures and yet be complex and flawed and veryhuman at the same time. There's no taking away from the heart of the book.It's told well, and it makes a wonderful, rich, rewarding read.



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Review of Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow (Hardcover)

Confession no 1: I'm an avid reader (professionally and personally) of books, and like most people I rank academic studies as my least favourite. Who in his right mind wants to slug through another tome of dry, tedious academese? Now that you know my bias, here's Confession no 2: recently I read John Howards Concentration Camps in on the Home Front in (almost) one sitting, and am still reeling from the pleasure. The prose is brimming with a procession of astounding and gripping facts, the "mots" are "justes", the style is as graceful as an albatross in flight. Most of all, as far as I'm concerned, the author tells a damn good story. Make no mistake, this is an extraordinarily detailed study of the biggest federal incarceration drive in American history--the forceful wartime suspension of liberties and civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans (who happened to be of Japanese extraction). Yet it reads like a cross between a biography of a remarkable individual (Earl Finch), a journalistic account of the zeiteist of a nation at war with Japan (and with itself), a political expose of national and Congressional bigotry and racism (what else is new), and a detective story with the scholar-as-sleuth on the tail of the elusive historical clue.
The interested reader will find here a welter of data (some of it never seen before), judicious (and when appropriate, acerbic) commentary, narrative passages written by a wordsmith in total control of his medium, and a great number of photographs which put a human face on the "internees" and relieve the flow of pages (set in a rather small font). All in all, Concentration Camps is historical, polemical, critical, ironical, veridical, and topical. It is also well worth reading.

Product Description
Without trial and without due process, the United States government locked up nearly all ofthose citizens and longtime residents who were of Japanese descent during World War II. Ten concentration camps were set up across the country to confine over 120,000 inmates. Almost 20,000 of them were shipped to the only two camps in the segregated South-Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas-locations that put them right in the heart of a much older, long-festering system of racist oppression. The first history of these Arkansas camps, Concentration Camps on the Home Front is an eye-opening account of the inmates' experiences and a searing examination of American imperialism and racist hysteria.
While the basic facts of Japanese-American incarceration are well known, John Howard's extensive research gives voice tothose whosestories have been forgotten or ignored. He highlights the roles of women, first-generation immigrants, and those who forcefully resisted their incarceration by speaking out against dangerous working conditions and white racism.In additionto this overlooked history of dissent, Howard also exposes the government's aggressive campaign to Americanize the inmates and even convert them to Christianity. After the war ended, this movement culminated in the dispersal of the prisoners across the nation in a calculated effort to break up ethnic enclaves.
Howard's re-creation of life in the camps is powerful, provocative, and disturbing. Concentration Camps on the Home Front rewrites a notorious chapter in American history-a shameful story that nonetheless speaks to the strength of human resiliencein the face ofeven the most grievous injustices.



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