A Life in Twentieth Century America

About the Book

For centuries life changed very little for most people. Wayne Cole could trace his ancestry through many generations in Norway without noting substantial changes in the way people lived. The New World provided a setting conducive to change, and the industrial and technogical revolutions spectacularly hurried those changes along. As he looked back over the years, Wayne Cole could identify in his own life evidences of many of those changes. As a boy in small town Iowa he attended tiny rural schools, mowed lawns, and worked in farm fields. Experience as an Army Air Force pilot during World War II accelerated the changes in his life, in America, and in the world. Those wartime experiences along with abundant educational opportunities moved him from rural Iowa to a life as a professional scholar. That profession provided opportunities that moved him to suburban America near the nation´s capital in Washington, D. C. As a professional historian he conducted research in widely scattered archives and wrote books that found their way into libraries in many parts of the world. By the time he retired in the last decade of the twentieth century he enjoyed a comfortable life that none of his ancestors had known. As he tells the story of his long life, Professor Cole also tells the story of those spectacular changes in America and the world. In the first decade of the twentieth century the Wright brothers first flew their fragile airplane, radio communication was in its infancy, and Henry Ford´s Model T car was very special. The single shot rifle was a formidable weapon. By the time the century ended most American homes had at least two shiny automobiles, jet airplanes circled the globe, Americans had successfullly traveled from the earth to the moon and back, nuclear and thermonuclear weapons had radically changed international power struggles, and computers were accomplishing communication miracles beyond the imaginations of earlier generations. Cole´s experiences touched many of those changes, and made his life different from those of all of his ancestors. One man´s life in the twentieth century throws light on many of those changes that in one way or another affected all who lived then and later.

About the Author

Born and reared in Iowa, Wayne S. Cole is professor of history emeritus at the University of Maryland in College Park. A specialist on the history of American foreign relations, he is the author of eight books relating largely to World War II, including volumes on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles A. Lindbergh, Senator Gerald P. Nye, the America First Committee, and relations between the United States and Norway. He and his wife, Virginia, have been married for more than a half century. They have one son, Tom, who is a teacher. They presently live in Silver Spring, Maryland.