Book Review: The Arsenal of Democracy

We watch our Google Analytics regularly, and one of the things that impresses us is what impresses you.  You might be surprised to learn that our most frequently visited pages and blogs are the product reviews, and in particular, the book reviews.   That’s one of the reasons why I want to get the word out to our readers about one of the best books I’ve read this year:  A.J. Baime’s The Arsenal of Democracy.

I first read A.J. Baime’s work in The Wall Street Journal, where he does a weekly piece on interesting cars.  You know, cars with a story behind them.  Cars that are still driven regularly.  I’d subscribe to The Journal just for those stories, although that newspaper has much more going for it than just Mr. Baime’s car stories. (The WSJ has objective reporting, something sorely missing in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, two papers that lean so sharply left it’s amazing they’re still standing.)  I like A.J. Baime’s WSJ articles, and when I learned he also writes books, I was in.

In a word, The Arsenal of Democracy is great.  It’s a wonderful book weaving together the stories of World War II, the Ford family, Detroit’s wholesale conversion to war production, the application of mass production to weapons manufacturing, the logistics of building major manufacturing facilities in the middle of nowhere, and Ford’s production of the B-24 Liberator.  Ford built B-24 bombers at the rate of one an hour (actually, they did slightly better than that by the end of the war), and there’s no question Ford was a major factor in our military success.  Baime made it all read like a novel, but all of it actually happened.

Folks, trust me on this:  The Arsenal of Democracy is a great book.  I think it’s one you should consider adding to your list if you haven’t read it already.  You can thank me later.

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