World War II and the West It Wrought

Mark Brilliant, David M. Kennedy

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781503612877, 9781503611573
• eBook ISBN: 9781503612884
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Few episodes in American history were more transformative than World War II, and in no region did it bring greater change than in the West. Having lifted the United States out of the Great Depression, World War II set in motion a massive westward population movement, ignited a quarter-century boom that redefined the West as the nation's most economically dynamic region, and triggered unprecedented public investment in manufacturing, education, scientific research, and infrastructure—an economic revolution that would lay the groundwork for prodigiously innovative high-tech centers in Silicon Valley, the Puget Sound area, and elsewhere.

Amidst robust economic growth and widely shared prosperity in the post-war decades, Westerners made significant strides toward greater racial and gender equality, even as they struggled to manage the environmental consequences of their region's surging vitality. At the same time, wartime policies that facilitated the federal withdrawal of Western public lands and the occupation of Pacific islands for military use continued an ongoing project of U.S. expansionism at home and abroad. This volume explores the lasting consequences of a pivotal chapter in U.S. history, and offers new categories for understanding the post-war West.

Contributors to this volume include Mark Brilliant, Geraldo L. Cadava, Matthew Dallek, Mary L. Dudziak, Jared Farmer, David M. Kennedy, Daniel J. Kevles, Rebecca Jo Plant, Gavin Wright, and Richard White.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Executive Domain: Military Reservations in the Wartime West
• 2. Enlisting the Laboratories: Science, Defense, and the Transformation of the High-Tech West
• 3. World War II, the Cold War, and the Knowledge Economies of the Pacific Coast
• 4. The Politics Wrought by War: Phoenix, Seattle, and the Emergence of the Red-Blue Divide in the West, 1939–1950
• 5. The Roots of Hispanic Conservatism in the Wartime West
• 6. “No Private School Could Ever Be As Satisfactory”: The Fight for Government-Funded Child Care in Postwar Los Angeles
• 7. How the Pacific World Became West
• Afterword
• Notes
• Contributors
• Index