"Warfare state shows how the federal government vastly expanded its influence over American society during World War II. Equally important, it looks at how and why Americans adapted to this expansion of authority. Through mass participation in military service, war work, rationing, price control, income taxation, and the War Bond program, ordinary Americans learned to live with the warfare state ... Citizens made their own counterclaims on the state -- particularly in the case of industrial workers, women, African Americans, and most of all, the soldiers. Their demands for fuller citizenship offer important insights into the relationship between citizen morale, the uses of patriotism, and the legitimacy of the state in wartime"--Jacket.

Introduction: War and the popular foundations of the state -- pt. 1. Ideology, political culture, and state formation -- War displaces its analog -- Morale and the national moment -- Scapegoating the state -- pt. 2. Encountering the state in everyday life -- Buying our boys back -- Work or fight -- Citizen-soldiers -- Conclusion: The paradox of rights in the warfare state.