V IS FOR VICTORY

First in the ``People's History'' series, a lively look at the many changes in the US as a whole, as well as for individuals, during WW II. Through both popular and scholarly sources and extensive interviewing (some apparently of people in her own family) who remember the period, Whitman presents the immediate response to Pearl Harbor, the redistribution of labor and resources, the effects on families of the long separations and dangers, and postwar adjustments. The many intriguing details include ephemeral effects like the use of leg makeup in lieu of nylons, but of greatest significance are the long-term effects of wartime changes: the growth of activism by black Americans, and of assertiveness by women who had worked outside the home and held the purse strings; the growth of large businesses at the expense of small, including farms; scientific advances, some (like DDT) a mixed blessing. Logically organized and illustrated with well-chosen, well-captioned b&w photos, a fine companion to fiction about the period (e.g., Hahn's Stepping on the Cracks, 1991) and to military histories. Bibliography (sources); index. (Nonfiction. 10-14)