All those images our good friend MW keeps putting up from the Life archive have fostered a thirst for knowledge about WWII life. Good Girls, Good Food, Good Service: The Story of the USO Hostess During World War II adds a little sex appeal to the reading list. The author is Megan K. Winchell, associate history professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Her work is published by UNC Press.

Throughout World War II, when Saturday nights came around, servicemen and hostesses happily forgot the war for a little while as they danced together in USO clubs, which served as havens of stability in a time of social, moral, and geographic upheaval. Meghan Winchell demonstrates that in addition to boosting soldier morale, the USO acted as an architect of the gender roles and sexual codes that shaped the “greatest generation.”

“A comprehensive history of crime and corruption in Cuba, The Cuban Connection challenges the common view that widespread poverty and geographic proximity to the United States were the prime reasons for soaring rates of drug trafficking, smuggling, gambling, and prostitution in the tumultuous decades preceding the Cuban revolution. Eduardo Sáenz Rovner argues that Cuba’s historically well-established integration into international migration, commerce, and transportation networks combined with political instability and rampant official corruption to help lay the foundation for the development of organized crime structures powerful enough to affect Cuba’s domestic and foreign politics and its very identity as a nation.”

Eduardo Saenz Rovner is Professor of History at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogata. The Cuban Connection: Drug Trafficking, Smuggling, and Gambling in Cuba from the 1920s to the Revolution is published in October, and in soft cover next January, from University of North Carolina Press.