The Pentagon : A History: The Untold Story of the Wartime Race to Build the Pentagon -- And to Restore it Sixty Years Later - Hardcover

Vogel, Steve

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400063035 ISBN 13: 9781400063031

Publisher: Random House Inc, 2007

Synopsis

The creation of the Pentagon in seventeen whirlwind months during World War II is one of the great construction feats in American history, involving a tremendous mobilization of manpower, resources, and minds. In astonishingly short order, Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell conceived and built an institution that ranks with the White House, the Vatican, and a handful of other structures as symbols recognized around the world. w veteran military reporter Steve Vogel reveals for the first time the remarkable story of the Pentagon s construction, from it s dramatic birth to its rebuilding after the September 11 attack. At the center of the story is the tempestuous but courtly Somervell-dynamite in a Tiffany box, as he was once described. In July 1941, the Army construction chief sprang the idea of building a single, huge headquarters that could house the entire War Department, then scattered in seventeen buildings around Washington. Somervell ordered drawings produced in one weekend and, despite a firestorm of opposition, broke ground two months later, vowing that the building would be finished in little more than a year. Thousands of workers descended on the site, a raffish Virginia neighborhood known as Hell s Bottom, while an army of draftsmen churned out designs barely one step ahead of their execution. Seven months later the first Pentagon employees skirted seas of mud to move into the building and went to work even as construction roared around them. The colossal Army headquarters helped recast Washington from a sleepy southern town into the bustling center of a reluctant empire. Vivid portraits are drawn of other key figures in the drama, among them Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president who fancied himself an architect; Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, both desperate for a home for the War Department as the country prepared for battle; Colonel Leslie R. Groves, the ruthless force of nature who oversaw

About this title

Product Description:

A veteran journalist describes the design and construction of the Pentagon, one of the world's most distinctive buildings, during World War II, the subsequent history of the building and its role during key historical events, the devastating September 11th attack and its aftermath, and the massive efforts to rebuild the structure in the wake of the disaster. 50,000 first printing.

About the Author:

Steve Vogel is a veteran military reporter for The Washington Post. His coverage of the war in Afghanistan was part of a package of Washington Post stories selected as a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. He covered the September 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon and subsequently reported in-depth on the victims of the attack and the building’s reconstruction. The winner of several journalism awards, Vogel covered the war in Iraq and the first Gulf War, as well as U.S. military operations in Rwanda, Somalia, and the Balkans. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, he received a master’s degree in international public policy from the Paul H. Nitze Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1400063035
• ISBN 13: 9781400063031
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 626