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Title details for Americans in a World at War by Brooke L. Blower - Available

Americans in a World at War

Intimate Histories from the Crash of Pan Am's Yankee Clipper

by Brooke L. Blower
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A vivid narrative of an ill-fated Pan American flight during World War II that captures the dramatic backstories of its passengers and, through them, the impact of Americans' global connections. On February 21, 1943, Pan American Airways' celebrated seaplane, the Yankee Clipper, took off from New York's Marine Air Terminal and island-hopped its way across the Atlantic Ocean. Arriving at Lisbon the following evening, it crashed in the Tagus River, killing twenty-four of its thirty-nine passengers and crew. Americans in a World at War traces the backstories of seven worldly Americans aboard that plane, their personal histories, their politics, and the paths that led them toward war. Combat soldiers made up only a small fraction of the millions of Americans, both in and out of uniform, who scattered across six continents during the Second World War. This book uncovers a surprising history of American noncombatants abroad in the years leading into the twentieth century's most consequential conflict. Long before GIs began storming beaches and liberating towns, Americans had forged extensive political, economic, and personal ties to other parts of the world. These deep and sometimes contradictory engagements, which preceded the bombing of Pearl Harbor, would shape and in turn be transformed by the US war effort. The intriguing biographies of the Yankee Clipper's passengers—among them an Olympic-athlete-turned-export salesman, a Broadway star, a swashbuckling pilot, and two entrepreneurs accused of trading with the enemy—upend conventional American narratives about World War II. As their travels take them from Ukraine, France, Spain, Panama, Cuba, and the Philippines to Java, India, Australia, Britain, Egypt, the Soviet Union, and the Belgian Congo, among other hot spots, their movements defy simple boundaries between home front and war front. Americans in a World at War offers fresh perspectives on a transformative period of US history and global connections during the "American Century."

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 1, 2023

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780199322022

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780199322022
      • File size: 23945 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 26, 2023
      In this unique snapshot of American involvement in WWII, Boston University historian Blower (Becoming Americans in Paris) profiles seven of the 39 people aboard Pan American Airways’ Yankee Clipper, the world’s largest commercial aircraft at the time, when it crash-landed in Lisbon’s Tagus River on Feb. 22, 1943, following a two-day island-hopping flight across the Atlantic from New York City. Five of Blower’s subjects were among the 24 passengers who lost their lives in the crash. They include Frank Cuhel, a silver medalist in track at the 1928 Amsterdam Summer Olympics; Tamara Drasin, a Ukrainian American Broadway star who debuted “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” in the 1933 musical Roberta; and a pair of businessmen who were accused of illegally trading with Axis powers. Delving into the lives of these strikingly cosmopolitan subjects, Blower highlights how, in the early to mid 20th century, Americans of very different social, cultural, and economic backgrounds forged international connections. With deep dives into the disparate corners of the globe—including the American Philippines, where Cuhel was based as a salesman of imported American goods in the 1920s and ’30s, and Ukraine, from which Drasin’s Jewish family escaped the pogroms of the 1910s—Blower evokes a nuanced, off-beat vision of the world in the lead-up to the war. It’s a satisfyingly fresh perspective on the era.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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