Search results for ""author victor brooks""

Blazing hot meets icy cool in a momentous year in US historyOn New Year’s Day in 1967, the 200 million Americans who lived in the United States were about to experience a fascinating, exciting, and sometimes bewildering twelve months that for many formed an iconic portion of their lives. Despite the fact that the coming year produced no Black Friday, Pearl Harbor, or 9/11 attack, the nation still underwent dramatic changes in everything from support for the Vietnam War to approval of candidates for the 1968 presidential election to attitudes toward sex with strangers and what constitutes the status quo.Almost without significant forewarning, Americans in 1967 witnessed a simultaneous cooling of Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union while the war in Vietnam exploded into a white-hot conflict that inflicted nearly two hundred American battle deaths a week. Meanwhile, young people at home were alternately listening to the “cool” sound of the Beatle’s new “Sgt. Pepper” album and Jim Morrison’s plea to get ever higher in “Light my Fire.” On television an emotional, passionate James T. Kirk shared an Enterprise bridge with the cool and logical Mr. Spock.Victor Brooks explores what happened—and in some cases, did not happen—to these two hundred million Americans in a national roller coaster ride that was the year 1967. He chronicles a society that proportionally had far more young people than was the case five decades later, with a widely publicized generation gap that produced more arguments, tension, and anguish between young and old Americans than any 21st century counterpart. 1967 is a fascinating, wide-ranging exploration including topics ranging from the first Super Bowl, the beginning of the 1968 presidential campaign, the social impact of the “Summer of Love” in San Francisco, and the American combat experience in an expanding war in Vietnam. The book represents a reunion of sorts for Baby Boomers as well as a guidebook for younger readers on how their elders coped with one of the definitive years of a pivotal decade.

Read more less

Last Season of Innocence discusses the lives of the preteens and teenagers who were in junior high school, high school, and the first year of college in the 1960s. These are the young people who read Seventeen and Mad, watched more television than their older siblings, and tended to listen to 45 rpm singles or "mono" LPs rather than the more sophisticated stereo albums of their older siblings. Substantial numbers of these teens could and did join political protests, but they also engaged in a more personal daily struggle with school dress codes and parental intrusion on social life. In a nation where a third of the population was under nineteen, they were hardly invisible, but their experience seems to have been marginalized by the twenty-somethings who largely redefined the meaning of the youth culture and took center stage in doing so. Brooks offers a unique account of the much-chronicled 1960s by examining the experiences of these preteens and teenagers.

Read more less

A meticulous exploration of one of the most important years in American history.The D-Day invasion, launched on June 6, 1944, is widely referred to as the longest day of World War Two. Historian Victor Brooks argues that 1944 was, in effect, “the longest year” for Americans of that era, both in terms of casualties and in deciding the outcome of war itself.Brooks also argues that only the particular war events of 1944 could have produced the “reshuffling” of the cards of life that, in essence, changed the rules for most of the 140 million Americans in some fashion. Rather than focusing on military battles and strategy alone, the author chronicles the year as a microcosm of disparate military, political, and civilian events that came together to define a specific moment in time.As war was raging in Europe, Americans on the home front continued to cope (with some prospering). As US forces launched an offensive against the Japanese in the Mariana Islands and Palau, folks at home enjoyed morale-boosting movies and songs such as "To Have and Have Not" and “G.I. Jive.” And as American troops invaded the island of Leyte—launching the largest naval battle during the war—President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thomas E. Dewey were in the home stretch leading up to the election of 1944.It has been said that the arc of history is long. Throughout American history, however, some years have been truly momentous. The Longest Year makes the case that 1944 was one such year.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Read more less

Military historian Victor Brooks argues that the year 1943 marked a significant shift in the World War II balance of power from the Axis to Allied forces. Brooks presents a global narrative of the American experience of war during the year, ranging from the tiny blood-drenched island of Tarawa to the vast expanses of North Africa. At no other period was the course of the war in such precarious balance, the author argues, as both Axis and Allies possessed roughly equivalent power, and as both sides still had reasonable expectations that victory could be achieved.At the beginning of 1943, the tide was slowly turning for the Americans and their allies, Still, the shame of terrible defeats on Bataan and in the Java Sea, at Dieppe and Savo Island were very recent memories. Early on, Americans had high hopes for a massive improvement in the direction of the war; by the end of the year, those hopes were becoming realities. The year 1943 is also the period in which the titans of th

Read more less

Last Season of Innocence discusses the lives of the preteens and teenagers who were in junior high school, high school, and the first year of college in the 1960s. These are the young people who read Seventeen and Mad, watched more television than their older siblings, and tended to listen to 45 rpm singles or "mono" LPs rather than the more sophisticated stereo albums of their older siblings. Substantial numbers of these teens could and did join political protests, but they also engaged in a more personal daily struggle with school dress codes and parental intrusion on social life. In a nation where a third of the population was under nineteen, they were hardly invisible, but their experience seems to have been marginalized by the twenty-somethings who largely redefined the meaning of the youth culture and took center stage in doing so. Brooks offers a unique account of the much-chronicled 1960s by examining the experiences of these preteens and teenagers.

Read more less