Introduction
1: Evacuation
2: Class and Community in the Blitz, 1940-41
3: The Industrial Front and Trade Unionism
4: The Mobilization of Women
5: Family in Trouble
6: Leisure, Culture, and Class
7: A Citizens' Army
8: Wartime Radicals Envision a New Order, 1940-1942
9: 1945 And All That
Conclusion
Geoffrey Field received his undergraduate degree in history from
Oxford University and a Ph.D from Columbia University. His research
and publications have focused on twentieth-century German and
British history and European racism. His book, Evangelist of Race:
The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, won the
Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best book on race relations in any
discipline and an Outstanding Book of the Year Award from
Choice.
He has been a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales, Paris, and the University of Paris, 13. He is
also a former Chair of the New York Council for the Humanities, was
a Senior Editor of
International Labor and Working-Class History, and continues to
serve on the journal's editorial board.
It is to be hoped that Geoffrey Fields comprehensive and
thought-provoking book will make a major critical contribution to
the seemingly endless process of repositioning the Second World War
in popular understanding.
*Penny Summerfield, History Workshop Journal*
[H]e increases our understanding of an important, still imperfectly
understood time, helping to clarify how a substantial,
unprecedented shift towards a more equal society was achieved,
incomplete and impermanent though it turned out to be.
*Pat Thane, Times Literary Supplement*
A fascinating, kaleidoscopic history of the British working class
during World War II, which upends many familiar stereotypes about
the war and British society. It also demonstrates that there is
still plenty of life in the field of labor history, whose death has
been prematurely announced many times.
*Prof. Eric Foner, The Nation*
This carefully written, solidly researched and clearly argued book
must be a part of all historical studies of the last century ...
Essential.
*Prof. M. J. Moore, Choice*
Field's book is an important intervention precisely because it
decisively brings the workers back in, placing them at the heart of
wartime social and political change, and in doing so deepening our
understanding of the wars impact on class relations ... an
excellent book, one of the outstanding features of which is Field's
mastery of a rich body of sources.
*Ben Jackson, English Historical Review*
a rich, densely textured social and cultural history of class
relations in Britain that goes a considerable way to realizing
long-lost ambitions toward 'total history' ... Blood, Sweat, and
Toil will rightly take its place alongside such now-classic
accounts as Angus Calder's The People's War (London 1969) and Paul
Addison's The Road to 1945 (London, 1975).
*Alan Campbell, Journal of Modern History*
This is a splendid, well-written, and deeply researched study of
the British working class during the Second World Waran essential
text about Britain during the war
*Peter Stansky, Journal of British Studies*
For anyone seriously engaged in the study of wartime Britain,
Field's work will likely be read for years to come.
*Adam R. Seipp, H-Net Reviews*
Field's readable, persuasive, and informed account should hold a
prominent place in the literature for some years to come...[He] has
unanswerably demonstrated the emergence of a new inclusivity in the
wartime nation .. [and] has provided a superbly documented account
of the centrality of class to the history of wartime Britain.
*Kevin Morgan, International Review of Social History*
Field ...brings forth a fresh eye and a highly impressive volume of
primary research; his analysis is always thoughtful and stimulating
... He has refocused our minds on class, has proposed some credible
hypotheses, and has done much to illuminate them. His book will
repay rereading, and is likely to become a key point of reference
in the literature.
*War in History*
... engaging and deftly written study ... For anyone seriously
engaged in the study of wartime Britain, Field's work will likely
be read for years to come.
*Adam R. Seipp, H-Net Reviews*
Field's readable, persuasive, and informed account should hold a
prominent place in the literature for some years to come ... [he]
has unanswerably demonstrated the emergence of a new inclusivity in
the wartime nation ...[and] has provided a superbly documented
account of the centrality of class to the history of wartime
Britain.
*Kevin Morgan, International Review of Social History*
It is to be hoped that Geoffrey Fields comprehensive and
thought-provoking book will make a major critical contribution to
the seemingly endless process of repositioning the Second World War
in popular understanding.
*Penny Summerfield, History Workshop Journal*
in its challenge to the triumphalist narrative of the war, Field's
study has staying power. Blood, Sweat, and Toil will perhaps have
its greatest afterlife in the classroom ... The individual chapters
on women's mobilization, evacuees, the Blitz, industrial relations
and trade unions, or the military could surely provide
undergraduates with a more complex survey of Britain's "good war,"
including the serious class tensions that shaped the wartime
experience.
*Joel Hebert, Journal of Social History*
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