James Kimble will be here on Saturday, January 15th at 2:00 p.m. to talk about his book, Prairie Forge: The Extraordinary Story of the Nebraska Scrap Metal Drive of World War II.
This book was chosen as 2021’s One Book One Nebraska selection. James Kimble takes readers across the entire state of Nebraska during the scrap metal drive early in America’s involvement in World War II. He will delve more into the history of how, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt called for the largest arms buildup in our nation's history. A shortage of steel quickly slowed the program’s momentum, and arms production fell dangerously behind schedule. The country needed scrap metal. Henry Doorly, the publisher of the Omaha World-Herald, had the solution. Prairie Forge tells the story of the great Nebraska scrap drive of 1942—a campaign that swept the nation and yielded five million tons of scrap metal, literally salvaging the war effort itself.