December, 1941 by Craig Shirley

This recently released book was one that I was looking forward to reading. The book promised to go into detail of the 31 days of December, 1941 telling us not only the political but also how the Pearl Harbor attack and subsequent war footing affected each and every American and their daily lives.

For me hearing how individuals reacted, what they bought, read and felt is like a vision into the lives of my parents. My parents had been married two years when World War II broke out, my Dad was declared 4f due to his flat feet but worked at BIW during the war in shipbuilding. Any looking glass into their lives at a time of their lives I never witnessed or heard much about is very interesting to me.

Shirley's book does a good job. We see how blackouts took hold, how newspapers were instantly censored. We see about the pending changes to American industry. Rubber was needed, so new new tires. New Cars were verboten as businesses from auto makers to vaccum makers were repurposed for military production.

Politics is a big part. We see much of Roosevelt and his cabinet. We see how Hawaii is devastated. This is a very useful book though Shirley's writing is not very captivating..or at least as captivating as I felt it could have been with this subject matter.

This book has a significant fault however. For whatever reason Shirley, in a book that purports to tell how all Americans came together and worked toward a common goal, a time when division was next to non existent, chooses at times to let his personal politics have a sharply divisive tone. It does not permeate the whole book so thankfully there is much good in this book. Out of the blue however will be mean spirited comments and asides all directed toward those of the Democratic persuasion. Shirley, which I would have known had I checked his previous writings , is a clear Conservative.

His pithy comments on Gloria Vanderbilt seem small and slightly obsessive as is his negativity to Fiorello Laguardia who in this time period was head of Roosevelt's office OCD office. Perhaps ten or twelve times in the book I came across an unusually harsh or opiniated paragraph. Inserted almost alien like into an otherwise interesting book. Still with this many references of the sort it is clear it is a path chosen.

Strange, disheartening and ultimately causing this book to be much less than it would be otherwise.

Shirley is off my list of authors to read or trust.