Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Alistair Cooke, a newly naturalized citizen, set out to see his country as it was undergoing a monumental change. He wanted to see what the war had done to people, to the towns I might go through, to some jobs and crops, to stretches of landscape I loved and had seen at peace; and to let significance fall where it might. Working throughout the war, Cooke finished the manuscript as the atomic bomb was being dropped on Hiroshima. His publisher at the time thought there would be little interest in books on the war, and so it was stuffed in a closet, where it stayed for almost sixty years, until it was unearthed shortly before Cooke's death.
Cooke was one of the most widely read and widely heard chroniclers of America - the Twentieth Century's de Tocqueville - and The American Home Front is a fascinating artifact, a charming travelogue, and sharp portrait of a changing America. His stories of the personal affects of war are incomparable, and his record of a lost country are captivating. This is the work of a master journalist; it is intelligent, touching, and funny.
