Launching Liberty
How America Built a Fleet from Scratch to Win the War
In 1940, with World War II raging overseas, the United States stood on the brink of conflict. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized that American involvement in the war was inevitable. More importantly, he understood that victory would depend not just on battles fought abroad, but on preparation and production at home.
Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, German submarines U-boats were targeting American ships. Roosevelt responded with a bold plan: build a vast fleet of cargo ships to support U.S. and Allied forces across the globe. These ships would carry the tanks, planes, ammunition, and food that troops needed to fight. Without them, even the most advanced weapons would be stranded on American soil.
Thus began one of the most ambitious industrial efforts in American history: the emergency shipbuilding program. The story is told in Launching Liberty, which chronicles how the U.S. transformed from a nation unprepared for global war into the "Arsenal of Democracy."
At first, these new Liberty Ships massive cargo vessels longer than a football field took over six months to construct. That pace was too slow for wartime needs. The government turned to an unlikely hero: Henry J. Kaiser, the industrialist best known for building the Boulder Dam. Though he had never built a ship before, Kaiser revolutionized the process. He opened shipyards across the country and recruited tens of thousands of workers many of them African Americans and women who were eager to support the war effort and find new opportunities in booming wartime industries.
Kaiser introduced assembly-line techniques to shipbuilding, slashing construction times dramatically. What once took months soon took weeks, and eventually just days. To motivate workers, Roosevelt and Kaiser even organized national competitions between shipyards to see who could build ships the fastest.
Launching Liberty brings this incredible story to life through the voices of those who lived it from the naval architects and engineers designing the ships, to the welders, nurses, daycare workers, and mothers balancing home life with wartime jobs. It is a vivid portrait of a diverse and determined America, united by a common goal.
This book by Doug Most offers a powerful reminder: in times of great need, ordinary people can come together to accomplish extraordinary things.
Doug Most
Doug Most is an award-winning journalist and author with a career spanning newspapers, magazines, and academia along the East Coast. A native of Rhode Island, he has worked in cities such as Washington, D.C., South Carolina, New Jersey, and Boston, contributing to a wide range of media outlets.
While reporting for The Record in Bergen County, New Jersey, he was named Journalist of the Year for his coverage of a heartbreaking case involving two teenagers accused of killing their newborn child. This deeply reported story became the basis for his true-crime book, Always in Our Hearts.
Doug went on to serve as a senior editor at Boston Magazine, and then spent 15 years at The Boston Globe, where he held key editorial roles, including Sunday Magazine editor and deputy managing editor for special projects. His writing has been featured in Best American Sports Writing and Best American Crime Writing anthologies.
In 2014, he published The Race Underground, a widely praised nonfiction book about the birth of the American subway system in the late 19th century. The book was later adapted into a PBS American Experience documentary. The New York Times described it as “a sweeping narrative of late-19th-century intrigue.”
Today, Doug serves as executive editor and assistant vice president at Boston University. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political communication from George Washington University and remains dedicated to storytelling that informs, educates, and inspires.