Ralph Donald is professor emeritus of mass communications at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, where he taught broadcasting, journalism, and film for 40 years. With his wife, Karen MacDonald, he is the coauthor of Reel Men at War: Masculinity and the American War Film (Scarecrow Press, 2011) and Women in War Films: From Helpless Heroine to G.I. Jane (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

This book explores how the Hollywood studios used sophisticated strategies of propaganda to ideologically unite the country during WWII. Through such films as Casablanca, They Were Expendable, and others, the studios appealed to the public's sense of nationalism, demonized the enemy, and stressed that wartime sacrifices would result in triumph.