19 Weeks

Although this is a history book, it is also extremely topical: the story of America and Britain coming together as increasingly close partners in the face of a global threat of war. But this is not 2003 and Iraq, but 1940 and the start of World War II. And, in an inversion of 2003, this is the story of the USA coming to the aid of Britain. Norman Moss's book is about the 19 weeks of World War II between May and September 1940 - a whirlwind of events that saw the swift fall of France followed by the evacuation of Dunkirk, air raids over London and the Battle of Britain, with Britain's entire safety and independence threatened as never before in modern times. Though the USA did not formally enter the war until after Pearl Harbor in 1941, as Moss shows, it was these crucial 19 weeks that swung the US from a position of defiant isolationism to a position of committed support for Britain's cause against Nazi Germany, and ultimately forged America's long-term interventionist role in the world. "19 Weeks" tells the story from both sides of the Atlantic, and from the point of view of both the policymakers and the ordinary citizenry.
It follows closely the developing relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill, Roosevelt's battle for the hearts and minds of his countrymen, and the far-reaching consequences for Britain's future role in the world, the seeds of which were irrevocably sewn during this brief, crucial epoch.