McElreath 1 Blane McElreath Professor Jason Doom Western History February 24, 2013

Emily Yellin, Our Mothers War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II, paperback (New York: Free Press, 2005). Emile Yellins, Our Mothers War, is a fantastic book that depicts womens lives during World War Two. It covers a plethora of aspects on female roles during the war. It takes its information from letters, diaries, and other sources that wrote about their experiences personally. It covers how women changed their roles after the men left: picking up jobs, growing victory gardens, joining the WAAC, or the American Red Cross, and hundreds of other live changing events. Emily talks about how these changes started occurring, and what they ended up transforming in the end. This book is going to be vital to my research on this topic. It contains all the information I could need in one book. With the firsthand accounts, immense detail, and educated thoughts, Our Mothers War is going to help strengthen my research greatly. The source is very truthful being that it was written by Emily Yellin. She has also written for Time, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications and has received her degree in English, and her masters in Journalism. She is extremely educated and is a credible source.

Donna B. Knaff, Beyond Rosie the Riveter : Women of World War II in American popular graphic art, (University Press of Kansas: Lawrence, 2012). After reading Beyond Rosie the Riveter, I gained insight on how womens image during World War Two drastically changed. The book is a compilation of popular graphic art containing: war posters, magazine cartoons, comic strips, and other advertisements. Knaff focused on describing womens gender roll, persona, and duties through her writing. Each picture shown is stripped apart and described how it helped change the views on women during wartime. The reading was enlightening and will provide me with a huge amount of key information to help describe the progression of womens lives during World War Two. It goes to great lengths to help the reader find out exactly how women changes throughout the war and how they ended up as a result of the war.

McElreath 2 Donna B. Knaff is a post-doctoral Fellow with the Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education, which makes her work very credible. Her information fits right in with all the previous research on her subject. Her content is accurate and descriptive making it a great selection to help me write my paper. James H. Madison, Slinging doughnuts for the boys : an American woman in World War II, (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2007). Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys tells you the story of Elizabeth A. Richardson, a member of the American Red cross, through her letters, a journal, photographs, and paintings. It is for the most part, a biography of Liz Richardsons life. It goes into detail from her birth on June 8th, 1918, to her death on July 25th, 1945. Living only 27 years, Liz Richardson knew more about war than most men overseas. The book illustrates her life and her impact on the war phenomenally. I know this book is going to be very valuable in my research on women during the World War Two era. All of the information present in this book is useful to me because it describes a woman hero on the front lines perfectly. It provides me with the thoughts, feelings, and gritty detail of the front lines through a womans perspective. The source contains much validity as it was written by James H. Madison, a College Professor at Indiana University. He has written five other books, and is a much decorated college professor. Also most of the book is filled with letters, journal entries, and postcards from Liz Richardson herself. David C. Smith, Since you went away : World War II letters from American women on the home front, (Oxford University Press: New York, 1991). Being a collection of letters from war brides and lovers, Since You Went Away provides a good view on what women felt while they were on the home front. The entire book is filled with letters from the front cover to the back. Reading each letter provides an eye opening depiction of what women went through back at home away from their lovers. The letters talk about almost every aspect you can think of from sexual desires, to day to day activities. It was very interesting reading several letters, but for the most part the letters provide an emotional view of women during the war. This different view is useful in learning what some women felt like and went through on the home front; however it doesnt provide information that describes the transformation of womens roles, or expectations during wartime. I think the book will be useful for a small amount of information pertaining to womens personal events. The book is reliable because it is just an anthology of letters back and forth from the home front to overseas. The author provides a little information in the book about the letters but in general the book is purely letter based which provides firsthand accounts of what was occurring.