Speaker Series: Launching Liberty

Doug Most, a resident of nearby Needham, is an award-winning journalist and author of three books whose career has spanned newspapers, magazines, and universities up and down the East Coast, from Rhode Island to Washington, D.C., to South Carolina to New Jersey to Boston. His 2014 nonfiction book, The Race Underground, tells the story about the birth of subways in America and was adapted into a PBS American Experience documentary. He works now as executive editor of the university daily newsroom and an assistant vice president at Boston University. He lives in Needham with his wife, two kids, and their beagle mutt Tessa.

With the shadow of war looming large over American life in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew it wasn’t a matter of if the United States would be pulled into battle, but when. He foresaw a “new kind of war.” America’s most critical need in preparation was not drafting more soldiers or manufacturing more guns. It was building more ships that could carry enormous supplies of weapons, vehicles, medical gear, food, and clothing to U.S. and Allied troops around the world.

Launching Liberty tells the remarkable story of how FDR partnered with private businessmen to build three thousand vital cargo freighters longer than a football field—ships he affectionately dubbed “Ugly Ducklings.” One ship could feed three million men for a day—an entire fleet could sustain troops for years. In these shipyards, old union barriers that kept out women and people of color broke down. And tired prejudices disappeared, giving rise to Rosie the Riveter and her cousin Wendy the Welder. This book uncovers the inspiring stories of the architects and nurses, engineers and mothers, who rose to the challenge, to protect not only their freedom, but also their country’s democracy.