In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930's

Capa
Yale University Press, 01/01/1995 - 595 páginas
In this magisterial book, a prize-winning historian shows how war has defined modern America. Michael Sherry argues that America's intense preoccupation with war emerged on the eve of World War II, marking a turning point as important as the Revolution, the end of the frontier, and other watersheds in American history. In the sixty years since the war, says Sherry, militarization has reshaped every facet of American life: its politics, economics, culture, social relations, and place in the world.

According to Sherry, America's militarization began partly in response to threatening forces and changes abroad, but its internal sources and consequences in the long run proved more telling. War--as threat, necessity, or model of unified action--persistently justified the state's growing size, power, and activism. But as national government waged "war on poverty," war on AIDS," and "war on drugs," it fostered expectations of "victory" that it could not fulfill, aggravating the very distrust of federal authority that leaders sought to overcome and encouraging Americans to conceive of war as something they waged against each other rather than against enemies abroad. The paradigm of war thereby corroded Americans' faith in national government and embittered their conflicts over class, race, gender, religion, and the nation's very meaning. Sherry concludes by speculating on the possibility of ending America's long attachment to war.

 

Índice

Emergence 19331941
15
Triumph 19411945
64
Consolidation 19451953
123
The Uneasy Balance 19531961
188
The Crisis of Militarization 19611966
237
The War Mentality in Triumph 19661974
283
Back to the Future 19751981
337
The Illusory Remilitarization 19811988
391
A Farewell to Militarization? 19881995
431
Conclusion
498
Endnotes
505
Essay on Sources
543
Bibliography
556
Index
569
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