Description: To boost soldiers' morale and remind them of the stakes of victory, the American military formalized a recreation program that sent respectable young women, along with famous entertainers, overseas. This history of the women who talked and listened, danced and sang, adds an intimate chapter to the story of war and its ties to life in peacetime.
Brief description: Kara Dixon Vuic is the inaugural LCpl. Benjamin W. Schmidt Professor of War, Conflict, and Society in Twentieth-Century America at Texas Christian University, an endowed position honoring a Texas Marine killed in Afghanistan. She is the author of Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War, which won the Lavinia L. Dock Book Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing and was Finalist for the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award. She advised and appeared in the PBS documentary USO: For the Troops, and the TLC series Who Do You Think You Are? and created an oral history collection for the Vietnam Center & Archive at Texas Tech University.
Review Quotes: The fascinating story of the women who, accompanying soldiers to war, volunteered for a different sort of service to the nation. YMCA Girls, Salvation Army Lassies, Red Cross Donut Dollies, and USO performers were meant to serve as symbols of home, entertaining 'our boys, ' boosting morale, and channeling men's sexuality. Vuic's insightful analysis of military entertainment is also a tale of the changing shape of the U.S. military over course of the twentieth century.--Beth Bailey, author of America's Army