By Richard M. Ketchum

Reviewed by Roy Lopata

This engagingly written popular history of life and politics in America in the years immediately preceding World War II brilliantly captures the era’s mood of innocence and at times willful ignorance as the nation faced imminent threats from overseas. Moreover, while Ketchum’s volume was published years ago and, as a result, does not benefit from the most recent scholarship of the interwar years, his detailed r...