Lots of detail on the years leading up to the U.s. Entering the war.particularly enjoyed the cultural details and the authors own reminisces. ( )

2288 The Borrowed Years 1938-1941: America on the Way to War, by Richard M. Ketchum (read 28 Apr 1990) This book was a fantastic reading experience, culminating in the last chapters on Pearl Harbor. It has little original research--some interviews--and relies on published accounts and magazines, so it is very much popular rather than scholarly history. But it tells the story of supremely important years and I found the final chapters dealing with Pearl Harbor totally moving, even though I've read whole books on the subject often before. Ketchum was born 15 March 1922 and tells something of his own life--as a "rich kid" in Pittsburgh and at Yale--in the course of the book. The book was informative on some things such as the work preparatory to the atomic bomb, and much, much else. This was a superlative reading experience. ( )