A Call to Arms

Mobilizing America for World War II

The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the world's history. The United States had to fight a war across two oceans and three continents - and to do so it had to build and equip a military that was all but nonexistent before the war began. Never in the nation's history did it have to create, outfit, transport, and supply huge armies, navies, and air forces on so many distant and disparate fronts.The Axis powers might have fielded better trained soldiers, better weapons, better tanks and aircraft. But they could not match American productivity. America buried its enemies in aircraft, ships, tanks, and guns; in this sense, American industry, and American workers, won World War II. The scale of effort was titanic, and the result historic. Not only did it determine the outcome of the war, but it transformed the American economy and society. Maury Klein's A Call to Arms is the first narrative history of this epic struggle, told by a master historian, and renders the transformation of America with a depth and detail never available before.

©2013 Maury Klein (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

A lengthy book about logistics

What did you like best about A Call to Arms? What did you like least?

This book covers the other side of World War II: being able to supply the materials to prepare for and participate in that war. The US was ill-prepared for that war, and had to mobilize quickly and with little time to spare. The problem I have with the book is that it is extremely detailed about those war efforts, and sometimes gets bogged down in those details. As a tech person, I enjoyed those details, but others may get bored.

Could you see A Call to Arms being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

I can possibly see this as a documentary series, but I don't think it will ever be done.

Critical material, terrible narrator.

An absolute must have. However, you have to deal with the performer. He speaks too quickly, and mispronounces EVERYTHING. The book is still worth it.

Too much yet too little

This could have been an amazing book if Maury Klein knew less about this topic and more about how to tell a story. But he can’t not put it all in. As others have noted, there is an enormous amount of material about bureaucratic infighting and there’s also too much backstory about WW2–nobody who would tackle a book like this needs that much help.. And the price is that the really fascinating story—how stuff got made and how the job got done—is buried alive. If anything this needed to be way less about people and a lot more about physical objects and their manufacture. (Klein has an unerring ear for the boring quote.)

I don’t recommend this as an audiobook for the above reasons (it’s a skimmable book, not a deep read) and also because the narrator is pretty bad. I guess Grover Gardner can’t read everything, but this book needed someone who doesn’t sound like Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter for the Daily Planet. A book already lacking in narrative intensity is worsened by narrator this lacking in gravitas.

At times interesting, but quite a long haul.

Would you try another book from Maury Klein and/or Ben Bartolone?

If it were shorter

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

would have been interested in hearing more about the aftermath - demobilization.

What aspect of Ben Bartolone’s performance would you have changed?

his cadence was half a beat to fast. It was as if he was rushing at times. The performance still clocks in over 34 hours. Narrator had at times some eye brow raising pronunciations and left me with the impression he had little familiarity with the subject matter or at least the time frame in which it was set. (I imagine that is not why he was hired) His voice is pleasant enough and I got use to the performance.

Do you think A Call to Arms needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

a focus on demobilization would interest me.

Any additional comments?

The material is at times very dry. You have to be pretty wonky to want to listen to it. I did learn much from it and overall enjoyed it. However, at times it felt like work.

America Goes to War -- At Home

A stunning and almost incredible account of the political, social and especially industrial awakening of America from isolationist neutrality to become the arsenal of democracy. With a broad and deep analysis and narrative Klein recounts the varied aspects -- technological, labor and especially political -- that turned America's cars and refrigerators into guns, while trying to keep the front and the home front supplied with food and other necessities. A magisterial work that leaves one in awe of the transformation and the men and women who managed it and changed America forever in every way.