Meet Joe Copper: Masculinity and Race on Montana’s World War II Home Front. By Matthew L. Basso.

Meet Joe Copper: Masculinity and Race on Montana’s World War II Home Front . By Matthew L. Basso. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. xiii + 360 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliographic notes, index. $90.00, cloth; $30.00, paper.) The copper mining and smelting communities of Montana were among the most vital war production centers but also bastions of white male independence. How did patriotic demands reshape masculinity? Deeply researched and engagingly written, Meet Joe Copper wrestles with this question and the continuities of particular gender identities. Contrary to the popular notion that “the greatest generation” obliterated the dominant Depression-era, blue-collar ideal of manliness, Matthew L. Basso argues that home front industrial workers maintained much of their gender identity in the face of wartime demands for obedience to production … kfoneswo{at}wvu.edu