Postwar: waging peace in Chicago

by McEnaney, Laura

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Title Statements

Full title :Postwar : waging peace in Chicago / Laura McEnaney.

Summary

Featuring a fine-grained history of Chicago's working class, Postwar investigates what the aftermath of World War II meant to a broad swath of Americans and finds a working-class war liberalism--a conviction that the wartime state had taken things from people and that the postwar era was about reclaiming those things with the state's help.

"When World War II ended, Americans celebrated a military victory abroad, but the meaning of peace at home was yet to be defined. From roughly 1943 onward, building a postwar society became the new national project, and every interest group involved in the war effort--from business leaders to working-class renters--held different visions for the war's aftermath. In Postwar, Laura McEnaney plumbs the depths of this period to explore exactly what peace meant to a broad swath of civilians, including apartment dwellers, single women and housewives, newly freed Japanese American internees, African American migrants, and returning veterans. In her fine-grained social history of postwar Chicago, McEnaney puts ordinary working-class people at the center of her investigation. What she finds is a working-class war liberalism--a conviction that the wartime state had taken things from people, and that the postwar era was about reclaiming those things with the state's help. McEnaney examines vernacular understandings of the state, exploring how people perceived and experienced government in their lives. For Chicago's working-class residents, the state was not clearly delineated. The local offices of federal agencies, along with organizations such as the Travelers Aid Society and other neighborhood welfare groups, all became what she calls the state in the neighborhood, an extension of government to serve an urban working class recovering from war. Just as they had made war, the urban working class had to make peace, and their requests for help, large and small, constituted early dialogues about the role of the state during peacetime. Postwar examines peace as its own complex historical process, a passage from conflict to postconflict that contained human struggles and policy dilemmas that would shape later decades as fatefully as had the war."--Provided by publisher

Edition Statements

Publication Date:2018

Publication Statements

Publisher(s):University of Pennsylvania Press
Place of Publication:Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Language:eng
Publication Date:2018

The Physical Object

Description:1 online resource (viii, 272 pages) : : illustrations, map

Edition Identifiers

ISBN:9780812295443, 0812295447
oclc:on1051299409
LC Classification:F548.5
Dewey Decimal:977.3/11043

Introduction: The End -- Bathrooms, Bedrooms, and Basements: War Liberalism in the Postwar Apartment -- Japanese Americans on Parole: The Perils and Promises of a Postwar State -- Living the GI Bill: Postwar Prosperity Through Government Dependency -- "I Would Not Call This the More Abundant Life": Working-Class Women Get Their Peace -- After the Double V: African Americans Demobilize for a "Real Peace" -- Conclusion: Writing the History of What Happened After.

Subjects

Chicago (Ill.) -- Ethnic relations -- 2… Chicago (Ill.) -- Social conditions -- … Chicago (Ill.) / Economic conditions / … Economic history Ethnic relations History HISTORY -- 20th Century. -- United Stat… HISTORY -- State & Local -- United Stat… Illinois -- Chicago Postwar reconstruction -- Social aspect… Reconstruction (1939-1951) -- Social as… Reconstruction d'après-guerre -- Aspect… Reconstruction, 1939-1951 -- Aspect soc… Social conditions