Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the
American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This
Pulitzer Prize-winning history tells the story of how Americans
endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those
unprecedented calamities. The Depression was both a disaster and
an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the
economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction
to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century
before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had
gyrated through repeated boom-and-bust cycles, wastefully
consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and
countryside alike. Freedom from Fear explores how the nation
agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war,
why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory
were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling
narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American
strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders an