Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers during World War II

Front Cover
Grand Central Publishing, Dec 4, 2018 - History - 384 pages
From John Strausbaugh, author of City of Sedition and The Village, comes the definitive history of Gotham during the World War II era.

New York City during World War II wasn't just a place of servicemen, politicians, heroes, G.I. Joes and Rosie the Riveters, but also of quislings and saboteurs; of Nazi, Fascist, and Communist sympathizers; of war protesters and conscientious objectors; of gangsters and hookers and profiteers; of latchkey kids and bobby-soxers, poets and painters, atomic scientists and atomic spies.

While the war launched and leveled nations, spurred economic growth, and saw the rise and fall of global Fascism, New York City would eventually emerge as the new capital of the world. From the Gilded Age to VJ-Day, an array of fascinating New Yorkers rose to fame, from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes to Joe Louis, to Robert Moses and Joe DiMaggio.

In Victory City, John Strausbaugh returns to tell the story of New York City's war years with the same richness, depth, and nuance he brought to his previous books, City of Sedition and The Village, providing readers with a groundbreaking new look into the greatest city on earth during the most transformative -- and costliest -- war in human history.
 

Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Introduction
PART ONE Storm Clouds Gather
Decades of Disaster
Gotham Goes to Washington
New Deal New York
Franklin Rosenfeld of Jew York City
If It Can Happen There
Life and Death
Civil Defense and Amateur Intelligence
Bums and Bombers
The Mayor and Murder
PART THREE Boom Town
Day of Infamy
The City Mobilizes
Youre a Sap Mr
Lights

Springtime for Mussolini
Hitlers New York Friends
The Rise and Fall of Fritz Kuhn
Paradise for Spies
Red Pink Pacifist
Cinderella
God Bless America
PART TWO The Storm Breaks
Mr New Yorks Worlds Fair
Einsteins Cottage
Treason
Eagles and Doves
Downward Christian Soldiers
Blitzkrieg
The Last Time I Saw Paris
Wendell Willkie vs the Third Termites
Hell No They Wont
New Yorkers and the Blitz
Harry Who?
Unlimited Emergency
Spies Traitors and a Flying
Youre in the Army
Boom and Gloom
Rosie and Not
NoGood Thieving Chiseling Tinhorns
Women at
Buffaloed Soldiers and Conscientious Objectors
Selling the
Zoot Suit Killers and a Bobby Sox Riot
Banking on Hitler
Murder and Massacre
A Spy on Staten Island a Riot in Harlem
Ghosts
The Manhattan Project and Its Moles
Clear It with Sidney
Endings
To Trinity and Beyond
PART FOUR
Treason on Trial
World Capital
Photos
Notes on Sources

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About the author (2018)

John Strausbaugh has been writing about the culture and history of New York City for a quarter of a century. City of Sedition, his singular history of New York City's role in and during the Civil War, won the Fletcher Pratt Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 2016; The Village, his epic history of Greenwich Village, has been widely praised and was selected as one of Kirkus Review's best books of the year (2013). His previous books include Black Like You, a history of blackface minstrelsy; and E: Reflections on the Birth of the Elvis Faith.

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