David Shribman mug

David Shribman

If you want to understand the world we occupy — the challenges we face, but more important, the failures we endure — forget for a moment that this is a day in late December 2021. Think instead that it is October 1943.

The singer Kate Smith has just completed 18 straight hours on CBS radio, a national-unity effort that prompted 39 million Americans to buy $107 million in war bonds. The fourth in a series of wartime ration books is being distributed. American women are scrubbing railroad locomotives, welding aircraft bodies, packing surgical kits to send overseas. Girl Scouts are planting victory gardens. A poster reads: Have you REALLY tried to save gas by getting into a car club?