Freedom's Forge

The extraordinary story of the development of America's industrial muscle and the rise of big business during World War II For admirers of books by Erik Larson and Stephen Ambrose, here's a great, meaty, and untold story of World War II - how American big business set out to build the weapons and create the industrial muscle to arm the Allies and defeat the Axis, from the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Ghandi & Churchill. Bestselling author Arthur Herman reveals how two extraordinary American businessmen - the Danish immigrant William Knudsen and shipbuilding industrialist Henry Kaiser - helped corral, cajole, manipulate, and inspire big business around the country to help mobilize the war effort and what later critics would call the American "military-industrial complex," without which the history of America, as well as of the Second World War, would be very different. Together these men changed the face not only of American business and industry but of American society. At the same time their efforts transformed the culture of America's armed services, giving the army, navy, and air force both the tools and the new strategies for securing a postwar global order.