Posted by Heidi Grange at 9:51 AM

Thursday, February 16, 2012

December 1941: The Month That Changed America and Saved the World
written by Craig Shirley
Nelson, Thomas, Inc. 2011
ISBN13: 9781595554574
656 p.
Grades 9 and up
Reviewed from e-book copy provided by BookSneeze for free.
All opinions expressed are solely my own. Book provided for honest review.

BLURB: December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World traces, day-by-day, the most important 31 days in the history of America’s participation in WWII, which snuffed out the lives of millions and changed history forever.
From December 1, 1941, until the morning of December 7, 1941, America was at peace and-with the exception of the stubborn and persistent high unemployment of the Great Depression-was a relatively happy country.  By the afternoon of the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, America was a radically changed country, forever. Its isolationist impulses evaporated, and both major political parties became more or less internationalist. The month also introduced food and gas rationing, Victory Gardens, scrap drives, a military draft, and the conversion of Detroit into an “arsenal of democracy.” From the moment of America’s entry into World War II, people of all kinds, but mostly women looking for work, flooded into the city. Instant apartment buildings sprang up, as did eating and drinking, salons, all to the advantage of the massive increase in spending generated by the federal government.
December 1941 is a fascinating and meticulously researched look at the American home front-her people, faith, economy, government, and culture-during a month that radically changed the American way of life.

I quite enjoyed reading this book.  I appreciated the incredible amount of detail that the author included.  I can only imagine the weeks, months, and even years he must have spent working on this.  I would have to read the book a dozen times to even begin to appreciate everything that happened during that brief month.  It was fascinating to read about what it was like experiencing the profound events of December 1941.  Ironically, it reminded me somewhat of the things that happened after 9/11.  The panic, the anger, the confusion, backlash, fear, etc.  I guess while time and technology continue to change, people and their behaviors don’t.

Howard Fineman

Posted: 02/ 9/2012 12:02 pm 

WASHINGTON — Conservatives begin their annual jamboree here Thursday certain of two things, although they don’t say them out loud. They need another Ronald Reagan. They don’t have another Ronald Reagan.

Invoking the Gipper is almost a religious requirement on the Republican campaign trail this year, but none of the presidential candidates is convincingly channeling the true Reagan spirit: He spent a lifetime thinking through the conservative movement and turning it into a salable set of ideas.

Rather than serving as a unifying moment, the four-day Conservative Political Action Conference, now in its 39th year, has become a symbol of a sprawling, ultimately incoherent movement that has yet to develop a new synthesis for a new century.

Conservatives are united in their opposition to Barack Obama, observed Craig Shirley, a CPAC veteran and one of Reagan’s newest and best biographers. “But hatred of the president is not a governing philosophy,” he said.

By Kathleen Hennessey and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times, Washington Bureau

5:55 PM PST, February 7, 2012

Four years ago, President Obama ran on hope and change. This time around, underline the hope, lowercase the change.

As he assumes his campaign posture, the president is increasingly positioning himself as the cheerleader in chief — bullish on American military might, cautiously encouraging on the economy, upbeat about U.S. standing in the world.

By: Alexander Burns
February 7, 2012 04:34 AM EST

This time, Newt Gingrich is back for good.

No, not in the Republican presidential primary, where the former House speaker is testing just how many times a candidate can resurrect himself in one campaign.

But viewed in a broader context, Gingrich’s tumultuous White House bid marks a larger political revival that may leave him — win or lose — in a position of national prominence unlike any he’s enjoyed since the 1990s.

Gone are the days of Gingrich as washed-up talking head, spouting off inflammatory and easily ignored rhetoric on Fox News in decidedly non-prime time hours. If he manages to conclude even an unsuccessful fight for the Republican presidential nomination with some dignity intact, Gingrich admirers and critics alike agree that he’ll have reclaimed a place for himself in the center of the national political conversation.

That, skeptics note, is a big “if.” As Gingrich continues to wage an increasingly vindictive-sounding, long-shot campaign against Mitt Romney, he might very well trigger a sense of Gingrich fatigue within the GOP and risk much of the goodwill he’s earned with conservatives. A march to the Tampa convention based on conservative principles could secure Gingrich’s place in history; a bitter personal crusade surely would not.

For the time being, said Gingrich biographer Craig Shirley, “the only downside for Gingrich is quitting.”

“His options are, A, he’s the nominee; B, he’s not the nominee but he’s a major presence at the convention and gives a dominating speech; C, Romney’s the nominee, loses to Obama and Newt’s a major presence in the party,” said Shirley, a public-relations executive and Ronald Reagan biographer whose firm is doing work for Gingrich. “There are three or four options for Gingrich and they’re all good.”

Jon Ward, Senior Political Reporter, The Huffington Post

Posted: 2/7/12  

WASHINGTON — Newt Gingrich might not get to debate again until Feb. 22, but he won’t be totally deprived of high-profile opportunities before then to break out and create some badly needed momentum.

Gingrich’s speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday afternoon will give the former U.S. House speaker from Georgia the kind of platform that he has previously used to his advantage in the Republican primary. The conference is an annual three-day gathering of roughly 10,000 devoted conservative activists in the nation’s capital.

“So one rich guy who likes to fire people endorses another rich guy who likes to fire people.

Just the image the Republican Party needs.”

Reagan, Gingrich biographer Craig Shirley

by Ronald Brownstein 

By Albert R. Hunt – Jan 29, 2012

Thursday, 26 Jan 2012 02:00 PM

By: Henry J. Reske

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s contention that Newt Gingrich isn’t really a Reaganite is “preposterous,” historian Craig Shirley writes in an Op-Ed in South Florida’s Sun Sentinel.

Shirley, author of three books about President Ronald Reagan, noted that, when Romney was asked about his conservative credentials during his run for the Senate in 1994, he replied: “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.”

“From the beginning of his political career, Gingrich was always at the ramparts as a staunch ally of the Reagan White House, from tax cuts to anti-communism to Federalism to pro-life and in all manner of great fights in that decade of Great Debates,” the Reagan Scholar at Eureka College wrote.

By Craig Shirley   |   9:40 a.m. EST, January 25, 2012