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Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II . By Mark R. Wilson . American Business, Politics, and Society Series . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press , 2016. Pp. 1-379. $45.00, hardcover.
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Over the last several years a growing body of research in economic history and history has added to our understanding of changes in American society, economy, and politics, brought on by WWII. Together with research on the 1930s and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, this literature provides a vital historical window into the institutions that are increasingly in the public view as in need of reform. In order to learn the appropriate lessons for the future, we must recognize the complexity of the environment from which these institutions emerged.
Mark Wilson's Destructive Creation is an excellent and informative contribution to this literature. In part, Wilson challenges a stylized view of mobilization for WWII that focuses primarily on the efforts of America's business leaders. More importantly, he documents the origins of the mobilization program in the contentious debate over the role of public versus private ownership in American society during the interwar period. In this way, Destructive Creation follows in the tradition of Robert Higgs' Crisis and Leviathan. Wilson is more sanguine on the importance of the interplay between public and private interests for the success of the mobilization effort than is Higgs, while also recognizing the long running political-economic dynamic that eventually produced the postwar military-industrial complex.
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