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Author: Associate Professor of Political Science Lorenzo Zambernardi Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192858246 Category : Death Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
Life, Death, and the Western Way of War traces when and how western soldiers--once regarded as simple fighting tools--became the far less expendable beings that we know today. In Kant's terms, the study traces the process through which soldiers have been turned from mere military means into ends in themselves. The book argues that such a major transformation is largely the result of a shift in the social meaning ascribed to soldiers' death. It suggests that looking at death can somehow provide a privileged angle to understanding the value that societies attach to life. The narrative emerging from the empirical evidence will show that the story of attitudes towards soldiers' death is the story of a gradual, increasing process of individualization in the social meaning attached to human loss in war. Such a development, which took centuries to emerge in full, was neither simple nor linear. It was a process that the state was temporarily able to frame in the collective narrative of the nation, but which ultimately has seen the increasing importance of the life of the individual soldier. In tracing the process through which soldiers have been turned from an amorphous collective into distinct individuals, this book shows how the emphasis on the primacy of the individual has further eroded the effectiveness of western warfare as an instrument of foreign policy. In particular, the modern, liberal conception of the soldier has had the unintended consequence of jeopardizing the Clausewitzian relationship between military means and political ends.
Author: Associate Professor of Political Science Lorenzo Zambernardi Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192858246 Category : Death Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
Life, Death, and the Western Way of War traces when and how western soldiers--once regarded as simple fighting tools--became the far less expendable beings that we know today. In Kant's terms, the study traces the process through which soldiers have been turned from mere military means into ends in themselves. The book argues that such a major transformation is largely the result of a shift in the social meaning ascribed to soldiers' death. It suggests that looking at death can somehow provide a privileged angle to understanding the value that societies attach to life. The narrative emerging from the empirical evidence will show that the story of attitudes towards soldiers' death is the story of a gradual, increasing process of individualization in the social meaning attached to human loss in war. Such a development, which took centuries to emerge in full, was neither simple nor linear. It was a process that the state was temporarily able to frame in the collective narrative of the nation, but which ultimately has seen the increasing importance of the life of the individual soldier. In tracing the process through which soldiers have been turned from an amorphous collective into distinct individuals, this book shows how the emphasis on the primacy of the individual has further eroded the effectiveness of western warfare as an instrument of foreign policy. In particular, the modern, liberal conception of the soldier has had the unintended consequence of jeopardizing the Clausewitzian relationship between military means and political ends.
Author: Victor Davis Hanson Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 0307831558 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 342
Book Description
The Greeks of the classical age invented not only the central idea of Western politics--that the power of state should be guided by a majority of its citizens--but also the central act of Western warfare, the decisive infantry battle. Instead of ambush, skirmish, maneuver, or combat between individual heroes, the Greeks of the fifth century b.c. devised a ferocious, brief, and destructive head-on clash between armed men of all ages. In this bold, original study, Victor Davis Hanson shows how this brutal enterprise was dedicated to the same outcome as consensual government--an unequivocal, instant resolution to dispute. The Western Way of War draws from an extraordinary range of sources--Greek poetry, drama, and vase painting, as well as historical records--to describe what actually took place on the battlefield. It is the first study to explore the actual mechanics of classical Greek battle from the vantage point of the infantryman--the brutal spear-thrusting, the difficulty of fighting in heavy bronze armor which made it hard to see, hear and move, and the fear. Hanson also discusses the physical condition and age of the men, weaponry, wounds, and morale. This compelling account of what happened on the killing fields of the ancient Greeks ultimately shows that their style of armament and battle was contrived to minimize time and life lost by making the battle experience as decisive and appalling as possible. Linking this new style of fighting to the rise of constitutional government, Hanson raises new issues and questions old assumptions about the history of war.
Author: Dan Egan Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393246442 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.
Author: Victor Davis Hanson Publisher: Doubleday Books ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 302
Book Description
Explores how three important battles, Okinawa, Shiloh, and Delium, an obscure battle of the Peloponnesian War, changed the course of Western history.
Author: Drew Gilpin Faust Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0375703837 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Author: Martin Shaw Publisher: Polity ISBN: 0745634109 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 195
Book Description
In this seminal new work, Martin Shaw, a leading expert on the sociology of war, argues that the new Western way of war is in crisis. He charts the development of a new warfare, after Vietnam, through the Falklands, the Gulf, Kosovo and Afghanistan. He argues that in the Iraq (mis)adventure (of which he provides a detailed analysis) and the War on Terror, the US has consistently flouted the key rules that enabled Western states to fight these earlier wars successfully. The results are not only political failure and a disaster in Iraq, but also a loss of credibility for the very idea of Western warfare. For Shaw, the new way of war focuses on containing risks to the lives of Western soldiers in order to minimise political and electoral risk to governments. Risk is transferred to innocent civilians, whose killing is explained away as 'accidental'. Yet the idea of managing risk is fundamentally at odds with the brutal, unpredictable nature of war. Ultimately, attempts to manage, govern and rule over the risks of war produce greater risks for those in power. The New Western Way of War is a moral and political statement as well as a major contribution to sociology and international relations. It will make compelling reading not only for students and scholars of these disciplines, but for anyone concerned about Western political and military power, and the future for global justice.
Author: Terry Sterling Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1493003062 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
Terry Greene Sterling enters the fearful ghettoes of Arizona, the gateway for nearly half of the nation's undocumented immigrants and the state that is the least welcoming toward them, to tell the stories of the men, women, and children who have crossed the border.
Author: John Dower Publisher: Pantheon ISBN: 0307816141 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 411
Book Description
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.” In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.” Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers “a lesson that the postwar generations need most ... with eloquence, crushing detail, and power.”
Author: Victor Davis Hanson Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1588364909 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
One of our most provocative military historians, Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other. Over the course of a generation, the Hellenic city-states of Athens and Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse of Athens and the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers throughout the ages a vivid and authoritative narrative. But Hanson offers readers something new: a complete chronological account that reflects the political background of the time, the strategic thinking of the combatants, the misery of battle in multifaceted theaters, and important insight into how these events echo in the present. Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment of the full scope of conventional and nonconventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, and thinkers including Sophocles and Plato. Hanson’s perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens and Sparta like America and Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and the current Middle East? Or was it more like America’s own Civil War, a brutal rift that rent the fabric of a glorious society, or even this century’s “red state—blue state” schism between liberals and conservatives, a cultural war that manifestly controls military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often surprising ways in which the past informs the present. Brilliantly researched, dynamically written, A War Like No Other is like no other history of this important war.
Author: Victor Davis Hanson Publisher: Faber & Faber ISBN: 9780571216406 Category : Battles Languages : en Pages : 492
Book Description
'Why The West Has Won' provides a history of the rise to dominance of the West, exploring the links between cultural values and military success.
Author: Associate Professor of Political Science Lorenzo Zambernardi
Author: Associate Professor of Political Science Lorenzo Zambernardi
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Author: Dan Egan
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Author: Drew Gilpin Faust
Author: Martin Shaw
Author: Terry Sterling
Author: John Dower
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Author: Victor Davis Hanson