Making War, Making Women: Femininity and Duty on the American Home Front, 1941-1945

Drawing on war propaganda, popular advertising, voluminous government records, and hundreds of letters and other accounts written by women in the 1940s, Melissa A. McEuen examines how extensively women’s bodies and minds became “battlegrounds” in the U.S. fight for victory in World War II.

Women were led to believe that the nation’s success depended on their efforts—not just on factory floors, but at their dressing tables, bathroom sinks, and laundry rooms. They were to fill their arsenals w...