From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt's America and the Origins of the Second World War

American Ways Series

by David Reynolds

Four years before Pearl Harbor, the United States had turned in on itself, mired in the Great Depression and fearing entanglement in another European war. Four years after Pearl Harbor, it accounted for half the world's economic output and boasted a navy and air force second to none. The period from 1938 to 1941, David Reynolds argues in his brilliant new book, was a turning point in modern American history. Drawing upon his own research and the latest scholarship, Mr. Reynolds shows how Franklin Roosevelt led Americans into a new global perspective on foreign policy, one based on geopolitics and ideology. FDR insisted that in an age of airpower, U.S. security required allies far beyond the Western Hemisphere, and that in an era of dictatorships, American values could and should transform the world. Months before Pearl Harbor, he had popularized the term "second world war." Mr. Reynolds, in his succinct overview of American foreign policy from Munich to Pearl Harbor, shows how the president used his new perspective in responding to international shocks—the fall of France, Hitler's invasion of Russia, Japan's drive into Southeast Asia. But one of the signal accomplishments of From Munich to Pearl Harbor is also to explain how the main features of America's cold war posture (following World War II) were established in the years before the war—a new globalism, a bipolar worldview, the foundations of the military-industrial complex, and the origins of the "imperial presidency." New in the American Ways Series.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, World War II

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. For more information please see David Reynolds.

A Professor of International History and a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He was awarded a scholarship to study at Dulwich College, then Cambridge and Harvard universities. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as at Nihon University in Tokyo and Sciences Po in Paris. He was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, 2004, and elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005. He teaches and lectures both undergraduates and postgraduates at Cambridge University, specialising in the two world wars and the Cold War. Since October 2013 he has been Chairman of the History Faculty at Cambridge.

Reviews

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting history of the era preceding the Second World War from the perspective of a British historian. His take on "Roosevelt's America" was made more interesting, if not more realistic, by his standing as an outsider. I have not read comparative histories from the American perspective, but assume that there may be differences in spite of the efforts to maintain a certain objectivity by the historians. My comparative reading of other historical figures has shown that the historians often betray political and/or philosophical biases in their narratives.

[Kevi]

*for school

[Terrence Spurlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

1st book in Cold War series.

[lizzielee2003]

required reading

From Munich to Pearl Harbor offers an engaging and interesting analysis of the period leading up to World War Two. David Reynolds serves up history in an easily digestable format, diving in to complicated moments in foreign relations with skill and ease. The pacing of this book is fantastic and I never grew bored with the source material. Reynold's also provides an interesting view of FDR and his motivations.

I would reccommend this book for anyone interested in WWII, international relations, the interesting Presidency of FDR, and the events prior to the Cold War.

[Ferris Bueller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read critical analysis or Roosevelt's role in the war