Dealing with ten key narratives, including novels and personal accounts, Herzog locates them in the tradition of war literature as well as recent cinema, and charts the transformations of the American nation in its experience of modern war.
Ida, a member of Sri Lanka's Female Tamil Tigers, fought with one of the longest-surviving and successful guerilla movements in the world. She is sixteen. Francois, a fourteen-year-old Rwandan child of mixed ethnicity, was forced by Hutu militiamen to hack to death his sister's Tutsi children. More than 250,000 children have fought in three dozen conflicts around the world, but growing exploitation of children in war is staggering and little known. From the "little bees" of Colombia to the "baby brigades" of Sri Lanka, the subject of child soldiers is changing the face of terrorism. For the last seven years, Jimmie Briggs has been talking to, writing about, and researching the plight of these young combatants. The horrific stories of these children, dramatically told in their own voices, reveal the devastating consequences of this global tragedy. Cogent, passionate, impeccably researched, and compellingly told, Innocents Lost is the fullest, most personal and powerful examination yet of the lives of child soldiers.
In the Spring of 1917, America went to war with an innocent determination to re-make the world. When the smoke lifted in November 1918, the nation emerged with its sense of purpose shattered, its certainties shaken, and with a new and unwelcome self-knowledge. Seventy-five thousand American soldiers were dead, and back home a Pandora's box of suspicions and surveillance had been opened. The Last Days of Innocence reveals how the fight to preserve freedom abroad led to the erosion of freedom at home. Drawing on American, British, and French archival material, the authors reveal unplanned and uncoordinated field efforts, as well as the unsavory activities of anti-dissent groups, from the Committee for Public Information to the Anti-Yellow Dog League, including a posse of children organized to listen for antiwar talk among families and friends. Here is the story of the fifty-billion-dollar war that gave birth to the Selective Service Act, threatened labor rights, stoked the fires of racial and religious intolerance, and concentrated the nation's wealth into fewer hands than ever before. The Last Days of Innocence tells the untold story of the war that rudely thrust Americans into an uncertain future--a war whose effects remain with us today. "Well-crafted in every way...a vivid and authoritative history."--Cleveland Plain Dealer "A neatly plaited narrative...rich in detail. A splendid history."--Washington Times
It is the twilight of innocence: America 1914. As Europe goes to war, Helen, a Boston bluestocking, begins her studies at Harvard-Radcliffe. Riley, a carefree British playboy more interested in chasing women than studying, sets his sights on her. He is surprised to find that his adversary in love is not Helen's protective brother, but Riley's own cousin, Wils Brandl, a brooding poet and German noble. As distant conflict begins to penetrate the quiet walls of Harvard, Wils must return to Europe and face a war for which he is not prepared. Set in Boston and Flanders Fields, Harvard 1914 explores love, war, and a new social imagination.
“Fake news existed long before Donald Trump…. What is ironic is that fake news has indeed been the only news disseminated by the rulers of U.S. empire.”—From American Exceptionalism and American Innocence According to Robert Sirvent and Danny Haiphong, Americans have been exposed to fake news throughout our history—news that slavery is a thing of the past, that we don’t live on stolen land, that wars are fought to spread freedom and democracy, that a rising tide lifts all boats, that prisons keep us safe, and that the police serve and protect. Thus, the only “news” ever reported by various channels of U.S. empire is the news of American exceptionalism and American innocence. And, as this book will hopefully show, it’s all fake. Did the U.S. really “save the world” in World War II? Should black athletes stop protesting and show more gratitude for what America has done for them? Are wars fought to spread freedom and democracy? Or is this all fake news? American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we’re told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and the more than a century’s worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet. Sirvent and Haiphong detail just what Captain America’s shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and why the Broadway musical Hamilton is a monument to white supremacy.
On October 3, 1873, the U.S. Army hanged four Modoc headmen at Oregon's Fort Klamath. The condemned had supposedly murdered the only U.S. Army general to die during the Indian wars of the nineteenth century. Their much-anticipated execution marked the end of the Modoc War of 1872–73. But as Boyd Cothran demonstrates, the conflict's close marked the beginning of a new struggle over the memory of the war. Examining representations of the Modoc War in the context of rapidly expanding cultural and commercial marketplaces, Cothran shows how settlers created and sold narratives of the conflict that blamed the Modocs. These stories portrayed Indigenous people as the instigators of violence and white Americans as innocent victims. Cothran examines the production and circulation of these narratives, from sensationalized published histories and staged lectures featuring Modoc survivors of the war to commemorations and promotional efforts to sell newly opened Indian lands to settlers. As Cothran argues, these narratives of American innocence justified not only violence against Indians in the settlement of the West but also the broader process of U.S. territorial and imperial expansion.
Over two decades' research puts Lyn Macdonald among the greatest popular chroniclers of the First World War. In 1915: The Death of Innocence, from the poignant memories of participants, she has once again created an unforgettable slice of military history. By the end of 1914, the battered British forces were bogged down, yet hopeful that promised reinforcements and spring weather would soon lead to a victorious breakthrough. A year later, after appalling losses at Aubers Ridge, Loos, Neuve Chapelle, Ypres and faraway Gallipoli, fighting seemed set to go on for ever. Drawing on extensive interviews, letters and diaries, this book brilliantly evokes the soldiers' dogged heroism, sardonic humour and terrible loss of innocence through 'a year of cobbling together, of frustration, of indecision'. 'It is rare to find a history of the First World War which manages to convey the front-line soldiers' experiences and to describe what it was that enabled those who survived to get through it. Lyn Macdonald has done just that' Sunday Times Over the past twenty years Lyn Macdonald has established a popular reputation as an author and historian of the First World War. Her books are based on the accounts of eyewitnesses and survivors, told in their own words, and cast a unique light on the First World War. Most are published by Penguin.