{"id":15603,"date":"2021-07-24T18:14:28","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T22:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15603"},"modified":"2021-07-24T18:16:34","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T22:16:34","slug":"americas-year-of-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15603","title":{"rendered":"America’s Year of Peril"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When she first heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, sixteen-year-old Elaine R. Engelson of Brooklyn was \u201camazed and ashamed\u201d of her \u201cweakness in facing a world crisis.\u201d She wrote to the New York Times <\/em>the next day that although she, like many others, had \u201cfelt the inevitability of war\u201d for some time, \u201cthe thought of it actually having come upon us was sudden.\u201d The horrifying events in Hawaii suddenly changed the rhythms of the teenager\u2019s life. She had grown accustomed to countless airplanes \ufb02ying overhead, but on December 8, the sound of an approaching plane produced a new sense of dread. Although \u201cthe world has not yet come to an end by any means,\u201d she had the ominous feeling that \u201cwe are on the brink of a precipice overhanging a world of complete darkness.\u201d What was at stake, she said, was something she and many Americans had not fully appreciated until then: \u201cWe are \ufb01ghting to save the world from a fate worse than death.\u201d For a stunned nation, it seemed impossible that the U.S. Paci\ufb01c Fleet had been caught so unaware. Over twenty-four hundred Americans had died, and the navy had lost eight battleships…. Along with shock and anger came another reaction, shared by millions on both coasts. People wondered if Pearl Harbor was just a prelude to something far worse. In a Gallup poll taken shortly after December 7, 60 percent responded that it was \u201cvery likely\u201d or \u201cfairly likely\u201d that the West Coast would be attacked in the next few weeks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

World News Group named Tracy Campbell\u2019s The Year of Peril: America in 1942 <\/a><\/em>their 2020 History Book of the Year for telling history with dramatic flair. They share an excerpt of the book in today’s Saturday series post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When she first heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, sixteen-year-old Elaine R. Engelson of Brooklyn was \u201camazed and ashamed\u201d of her \u201cweakness in facing a world crisis.\u201d She wrote to the New York Times the next day that although she, like many others, had \u201cfelt the inevitability of war\u201d for some time, \u201cthe thought of it … Continue reading America’s Year of Peril<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[1215,3385],"class_list":["post-15603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","tag-history","tag-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15603"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15605,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15603\/revisions\/15605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}