In nearly three thousand BBC broadcasts over fifty-eight years, Alistair Cooke reported on America, illuminating our country for a global audience. He was one of the most widely read and widely heard chroniclers of America—the Twentieth Century’s de Tocqueville. Cooke died in 2004, but shortly before he passed away a long-forgotten manuscript resurfaced in a closet in his New York apartment. It was a travelogue of America during the early days of World War II that had sat there for sixty years. Published to stellar reviews in 2006, though “somewhat past deadline,” Cooke’s The American Home Front is a “valentine to his adopted country by someone who loved it as well as anyone and knew it better than most” (The Plain Dealer [Cleveland]). It is a unique artifact and a historical gem, “an unexpected and welcome discover in a time capsule.” (Washington Post) A portrait frozen in time, the book offers a charming look at the war through small towns, big cities, and the American landscape as they once were. The American Home Front is also a brilliant piece of reportage, a historical gem that “affirms Cooke’s enduring place as a great twentieth-century reporter” (American Heritage).

A New York Times Bestseller

“An unexpected and welcome discovery in a time capsule. . . . even after all these years, and all those countless previous books about the wartime home front, Cooke has interesting things to tell us.” –Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

“He filed lated, but boy, did he get it right.” –William Grimes, The New York Times

“The American Home Front teems with Cooke’s eloquence and insight…. His whole book is a tale told with easy elegance.” –Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Here are the antecedents of who we are now, grasped with a clarity and foresight that is all the more stunning for having been hidden away in a closet for nearly sixty years.” –Verlyn Klinkenborg, Bookforum