Real Enemies

Real Enemies PDF Author: Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199753571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies Kathryn Olmsted shows that it was only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics. In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Analyzing the wide-spread suspicions surrounding such events as Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, Olmsted sheds light on why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the governments we ourselves elect.

Real Enemies

Real Enemies PDF Author: Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199753571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies Kathryn Olmsted shows that it was only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics. In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Analyzing the wide-spread suspicions surrounding such events as Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, Olmsted sheds light on why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the governments we ourselves elect.

Arms and the State

Arms and the State PDF Author: Keith Krause
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521558662
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This book analyses the structure and motive forces that shape the global arms transfer and production system.

Warhogs

Warhogs PDF Author: Stuart D. Brandes
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813157609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The Puritans condemned war profiteering as a "Provoking Evil," George Washington feared that it would ruin the Revolution, and Franklin D. Roosevelt promised many times that he would never permit the rise of another crop of "war millionaires." Yet on every occasion that American soldiers and sailors served and sacrificed in the field and on the sea, other Americans cheerfully enhanced their personal wealth by exploiting every opportunity that wartime circumstances presented. In Warhogs, Stuart D. Brandes masterfully blends intellectual, economic, and military history into a fascinating discussion of a great moral question for generations of Americans: Can some individuals rightly profit during wartime while others sacrifice their lives to protect the nation? Drawing upon a wealth of manuscript sources, newspapers, contemporary periodicals, government reports, and other relevant literature, Brandes traces how each generation in financing its wars has endeavored to assemble resources equitably, to define the ethical questions of economic mobilization, and to manage economic sacrifice responsibly. He defines profiteering to include such topics as price gouging, quality degradation, trading with the enemy, plunder, and fraud, in order to examine the different guises of war profits and the degree to which they have existed from one era to the next. This far-reaching discussion moves beyond a linear narrative of the financial schemes that have shaped this nation's capacity to make war to an in-depth analysis of American thought and culture. Those scholars, students, and general readers interested in the interaction of legislative, economic, social, and technological events with the military establishment will find no other study that so thoroughly surveys the story of war profits in America.

The Definitive FDR

The Definitive FDR PDF Author: James MacGregor Burns
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504047702
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1470

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Book Description
A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian’s dramatic biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, US president during the Depression and WWII. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the longest serving president in US history, reshaping the country during the crises of the Great Depression and World War II. James MacGregor Burns’s magisterial two-volume biography tells the complete life story of the fascinating political figure who instituted the New Deal. Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940): Before his ascension to the presidency, FDR laid the groundwork for his unprecedented run with decades of canny political maneuvering and steady consolidation of power. Hailed by the New York Times as “a sensitive, shrewd, and challenging book” and by Newsweek as “a case study unmatched in American political writings,” The Lion and the Fox details Roosevelt’s youth and education, his rise to national prominence, all the way through his first two terms as president. Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (1940–1945): The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning history of FDR’s final years examines the president’s skillful wartime leadership as well as his vision for postwar peace. Acclaimed by William Shirer as “the definitive book on Roosevelt in the war years,” and by bestselling author Barbara Tuchman as “engrossing, informative, endlessly readable,” The Soldier of Freedom is a moving profile of a leader gifted with rare political talent in an era of extraordinary challenges.

Unwarranted Influence

Unwarranted Influence PDF Author: James Ledbetter
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300168829
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In Dwight D. Eisenhower's last speech as president, on January 17, 1961, he warned America about the "military-industrial complex," a mutual dependency between the nation's industrial base and its military structure that had developed during World War II. After the conflict ended, the nation did not abandon its wartime economy but rather the opposite. Military spending has steadily increased, giving rise to one of the key ideas that continues to shape our country's political landscape.In this book, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Eisenhower's farewell address, journalist James Ledbetter shows how the government, military contractors, and the nation's overall economy have become inseparable. Some of the effects are beneficial, such as cell phones, GPS systems, the Internet, and the Hubble Space Telescope, all of which emerged from technologies first developed for the military. But the military-industrial complex has also provoked agonizing questions. Does our massive military establishment--bigger than those of the next ten largest combined--really make us safer? How much of our perception of security threats is driven by the profit-making motives of military contractors? To what extent is our foreign policy influenced by contractors' financial interests?Ledbetter uncovers the surprising origins and the even more surprising afterlife of the military-industrial complex, an idea that arose as early as the 1930s, and shows how it gained traction during World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam era and continues even today.

Review of Current Military Literature

Review of Current Military Literature PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 966

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Book Description


The Works of Graham Greene, Volume 3

The Works of Graham Greene, Volume 3 PDF Author: Mike Hill
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350285749
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Over a 60-year career, Graham Greene was a prolific and widely read writer. Completing a series of volumes which constitutes the only full bibliographical guide to Greene's published and unpublished writings, this book features updated listings of the scholarship associated with his work, details of recent audio and visual presentations and adaptations, as well as nine essays on lesser-known aspects of Greene's work. Featuring new material from the recently expanded Graham Greene archive which will be of particular interest and relevance to Greene scholars, it also covers contents of other archives in the UK and elsewhere in a series of mini-essays.

Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia

Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia PDF Author: Leon Surette
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773586652
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
While these authors' political inclinations are well known and much discussed, previous studies have failed to adequately analyse the surrounding political circumstances that informed the specific utopian aspirations in each writer's works. Balancing a thorough knowledge of their works with an understanding of the political climate of the early twentieth century, Leon Surette provides new insights into the motivations and development of each writer's respective political postures. Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia examines their political commentary and their correspondence with each other from 1910s to the 1950s. Contextualizing their political thought in a world troubled by two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Bolshevik Revolution, Surette traces their shared concerns and the divergent responses of each of these figures in the historical moment to the risk they perceived of democracies becoming the pawns of commercial and industrial elites, leading to war and mindless consumerism. They all leaned toward autocratic solutions, though Pound and Lewis eventually admitted their error.

The Sailor

The Sailor PDF Author: David F. Schmitz
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813180457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
In The Sailor, David F. Schmitz presents a comprehensive reassessment of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's foreign policymaking. Most historians have cast FDR as a leader who resisted an established international strategy and who was forced to react quickly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, launching the nation into World War II. Drawing on a wealth of primary documents as well as the latest secondary sources, Schmitz challenges this view, demonstrating that Roosevelt was both consistent and calculating in guiding the direction of American foreign policy throughout his presidency. Schmitz illuminates how the policies FDR pursued in response to the crises of the 1930s transformed Americans' thinking about their place in the world. He shows how the president developed an interlocking set of ideas that prompted a debate between isolationism and preparedness, guided the United States into World War II, and mobilized support for the war while establishing a sense of responsibility for the postwar world. The critical moment came in the period between Roosevelt's reelection in 1940 and the Pearl Harbor attack, when he set out his view of the US as the arsenal of democracy, proclaimed his war goals centered on protection of the four freedoms, secured passage of the Lend-Lease Act, and announced the principles of the Atlantic Charter. This long-overdue book presents a definitive new perspective on Roosevelt's diplomacy and the emergence of the United States as a world power. Schmitz's work offers an important correction to existing studies and establishes FDR as arguably the most significant and successful foreign policymaker in the nation's history.

The Untold History of the United States, Volume 1

The Untold History of the United States, Volume 1 PDF Author: Oliver Stone
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481421751
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
The truth about America is revealed in this first of four volumes of the young readers’ edition of The Untold History of the United States, from Academy Award–winning director Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, adapted by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. There is history as we know it. And there is history we should have known. Complete with photos, illustrations, and little-known documents, this first of four volumes covers crucial moments in American history from the late nineteenth century to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is not the kind of history taught in schools or normally presented on television or in popular movies. This riveting young readers’ edition challenges prevailing orthodoxies to reveal the dark reality about the rise and fall of the American empire for curious, budding historians who are hungry for the truth. Based on the latest archival findings and recently declassified information, this book will come as a surprise to the vast majority of students and their teachers—and that’s precisely why this edition is such a crucial counterpoint to today’s history textbooks. Adapted by Newbery Honor recipient Susan Campbell Bartoletti from the bestselling book and companion to the documentary The Untold History of the United States by Academy Award–winning director Oliver Stone and renowned historian Peter Kuznick, this volume presents young readers with a powerful and provocative look at the past century of American imperialism.