Brooks on Books: "Over Here! New York City During World War II" by Lorraine B. Diehl

As someone fascinated by life in wartime America, I enjoyed the heck out of this great book. Diehl focuses on New York City during the World War II era, but she covers so much ground so well that she provides an illuminating look at the entire homefront. It was a time full of danger, excitement, sorrow, and joy, and "Over Here!" captures all of it, even while it covers some of the more mundane details of everyday life in a big city during a big world war.

Fortunately, Diehl's writing is never mundane, and the book takes us on a well-organized journey from the early 1930s, when Nazism began to rear its ugly head in certain sections of New York City, to the exuberance of V-E Day and V-J day and (in a thoughtful epilogue) the adjustments the city and the country made as it encountered housing shortages, the removal of women from the workforce, et cetera.

Reading about this era makes you realize how little Americans sacrificed during the "War on Terror." I mean, rising gas prices suck, but at least we have gas. "Over Here!" details the rationing of gasoline, common household items, and even meat. Mayor LaGuardia, who is unsurprisingly a big player in these pages, declared entire meat-free days on which restaurants could not serve it. I'm glad we don't have to endure that now. Could we?

There are so many fascinating elements to cover here that Diehl's relatively short book gives you the feeling of having covered a lot of ground. Topics such as espionage in New York, air raid sirens, entertaining the troops at venues like the Stage Door Canteen--all are included, and all are worthy of further exploration, but Diehl offers an excellent overview here.

It's an attractive book, too, with numerous illustrations. In addition to the many vintage photographs, there are reproductions of editorial cartoons, newspaper pages, ads, and more. I would suspect even a hardcore WWII buff familiar with much of the subject matter and even the details would appreciate the presentation here, in large part due to these illustrations.

I highly recommend "Over Here!" to anyone interested in the time period. When we watch Hollywood movies from the WWII years, it's easy to get a glossy image of the glory and the honor of this part of our nation's history. Yet Lorraine Diehl makes the impact of the Second World War vivid even to those of us who live in a time of constant non-sacrifice. People did without, people pitched in, people did what they could--people even felt fear, even thousands of miles away from the official theaters of battle. "Over Here!" makes you feel the pain and the happiness felt by New York City--and America as a whole--throughout its pages.