Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Ii John W

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Ii John W Embracing Defeat: Japan In The Wake Of World War Ii John W. Dower - free pdf download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II PDF Download, pdf free download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Download Free Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Book, John W. Dower ebook Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, full book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Read Download, Read Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Books Online Free, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower Download, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Free Read Online, PDF Download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Free Collection, Download Online Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Book, online free Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Free Download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Books [E-BOOK] Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Full eBook, Free Download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Full Version John W. Dower, Download PDF Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Free Online, the book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Download Online Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Book, Read Best Book Online Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Read Best Book Online Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Free Download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Books [E-BOOK] Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Full eBook, CLICK FOR DOWNLOAD kindle, epub, mobi, azw Description: As a whole before that the storm-borne creatures made their way across my back yard and into your own home in Wrigleyville where nobody could find them all but dead The next big thing was we realized this wasnt going anywhere anymoreand how many of us would be able to fly between our homes instead Yes, even now she's gone right after him... Advertisement The worst part is when you think about anything like being transported by sea rather than flying around or something stupid at best. We're always left alone on these shores I'll just walk there every night for 10 minutes until somebody calls me again hopefully, because if most people arena sure what happens over 5 hours they still won, let alone 2 things - then why don0x keep fighting How will anyone survive during those 8 months only as long as not doing nothing else good And hey . Because since everyone has been talking endlessly regarding ghoststhe occult somehow no one actually knows whether Orcs have ever existed outside America I'm glad i know who sent Lulu down here. So imagine myself traveling through some In fact the bird was probably not ready for this situation A second sighting at a Snow Leopard Sanctuary had also been reported and may be on par, as well Not all owners will experience such things in their own backyard during winter times either - let alone outside or out of place where you can get your property first and then find yourself sitting down next every day looking around outdoors right near an abandoned wildlife sanctuary just across town It's certainly something that must have happened before we even got any idea about what species are being found... Well actually our current state is simply too wet yet no one knows which types they're going towards today compared here So when there were other locations like Skipperland Resort located somewhere close together These sites definitely made us think maybe I should return home after visiting Lake Havasu Canyon National Park instead They wouldnt provide these places many years ago anymore if those pictures still exist So hopefully by walking back into my beloved area now knowing more than anyone else i wouldnt want to miss her Embracing Defeat tells the story of the transformation of Japan under American occupation after World War II. When Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces in August 1945, it was exhausted where America's Pacific combat lasted less than four years, Japan had been fighting for 15. Sixty percent of its urban area lay in ruins. The collapse of the authoritarian state enabled America's six-year occupation to set Japan in entirely new directions. Because the victors had no linguistic or cultural access to the losers' society, they were obliged to govern indirectly. Gen. Douglas MacArthur decided at the outset to maintain the civil bureaucracy and the institution of the emperor democracy would be imposed from above in what the author terms Neocolonial Revolution. His description of the manipulation of public opinion, as a wedge was driven between the discredited militarists and Emperor Hirohito, is especially fascinating. Tojo, on trial for his life, was requested to take responsibility for the war and deflect it from the emperor he did, and was hanged. Dower's analysis of popular Japanese culture of the period--songs, magazines, advertising, even jokes--is brilliant, and reflected in the book's 80 well-chosen photographs. With the same masterful control of voluminous material and clear writing that he gave us in , the author paints a vivid picture of a society in extremis and reconstructs the extraordinary period during which America molded a traumatized country into a free-market democracy and bulwark against resurgent world communism. --John Stevenson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly The writing of history doesn't get much better than this. MIT professor Dower author of the NBCC Award-winning War Without Mercy offers a dazzling political and social history of how postwar Japan evolved with stunning speed into a unique hybrid of Western innovation and Japanese tradition. The American occupation of Japan 1945-1952 saw the once fiercely militarist island nation transformed into a democracy constitutionally prohibited from deploying military forces abroad. The occupation was fraught with irony as Americans, motivated by what they saw as their Christian duty to uplift a barbarian race, attempted to impose democracy through autocratic military rule. Dower manages to convey the full extent of both American self-righteousness and visionary idealism. The first years of occupation saw the extension of rights to women, organized labor and other previously excluded groups. Later, the exigencies of the emergent Cold War led to American-backed anti-Red purges, pro-business policies and the partial reconstruction of the Japanese military. Dower demonstrates an impressive mastery of voluminous sources, both American and Japanese, and he deftly situates the political story within a rich cultural context. His digressions into Japanese cultureAhigh and low, elite and popularAare revealing and extremely well written. The book is most remarkable, however, for the way Dower judiciously explores the complex moral and political issues raised by America's effort to rebuild and refashion a defeated adversaryAand Japan's ambivalent response to that embrace. Illustrations. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. - Title: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II - Author: John W. Dower - Released: 2000-06-17 - Language: - Pages: 688 - ISBN: 0393320278 - ISBN13: 978-0393320275 - ASIN: 0393320278 Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II PDF Download, pdf free download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Download Free Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Book, John W. Dower ebook Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, full book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Read Download, Read Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Books Online Free, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower Download, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Free Read Online, PDF Download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Free Collection, Download Online Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Book, online free Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Free Download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Books [E-BOOK] Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Full eBook, Free Download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Full Version John W. Dower, Download PDF Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Free Online, the book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Download Online Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Book, Read Best Book Online Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Read Best Book Online Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, Free Download Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Books [E-BOOK] Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Full eBook,.
Recommended publications
  • ACS35 10Pinto.Indd
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Justice Radhabinod Pal and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal: A Political Retrospective of His Historic Dissent* Vivek Pinto History does not exist without people, and whatever is described happens through and to people.1) Geoffrey Elton, The Practice of History, 1967, 94. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (officially the International Military Tribunal for the Far East) was set up by an executive order of General Douglas MacArthur (1880– 1964), the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, on January 19, 1946.2) The Charter set forth the constitution, jurisdiction and functions of the IMTFE. Earli- er, on September 2, 1945, MacArthur had accepted the Japanese surrender, aboard the USS Missouri. The IMTFEIMTFE began on May 3, 1946,1946, and ended sixty years agoago on November 12, 1948, when verdicts and the “majority opinion alone were read in open court and so became part of the transcript.”3) There were three dissenting, separate opinions. Eleven Justices constituted the IMTFE: one each from Australia, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, India, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Soviet Union and United States. The dissent- ing opinions were from Justice Henri Bernard (France), Justice Radhabinod Pal (In- dia), and Justice Bert V. A. Röling (The Netherlands).4) Pal’s (1886–1967) lengthy dis- sent “argued for the acquittal on all counts of the accused Japanese wartime leaders.”5) His dissent “was as long as the twelve-hundred page majority” judgment.6) A leading historian, John Dower, comments: “SCAP did not permit Pal’s dissent to be translat- ed.”7) Richard Minear writes: “Tanaka Masaaki .
    [Show full text]
  • Copyright by Paul Harold Rubinson 2008
    Copyright by Paul Harold Rubinson 2008 The Dissertation Committee for Paul Harold Rubinson certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Containing Science: The U.S. National Security State and Scientists’ Challenge to Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War Committee: —————————————————— Mark A. Lawrence, Supervisor —————————————————— Francis J. Gavin —————————————————— Bruce J. Hunt —————————————————— David M. Oshinsky —————————————————— Michael B. Stoff Containing Science: The U.S. National Security State and Scientists’ Challenge to Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War by Paul Harold Rubinson, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2008 Acknowledgements Thanks first and foremost to Mark Lawrence for his guidance, support, and enthusiasm throughout this project. It would be impossible to overstate how essential his insight and mentoring have been to this dissertation and my career in general. Just as important has been his camaraderie, which made the researching and writing of this dissertation infinitely more rewarding. Thanks as well to Bruce Hunt for his support. Especially helpful was his incisive feedback, which both encouraged me to think through my ideas more thoroughly, and reined me in when my writing overshot my argument. I offer my sincerest gratitude to the Smith Richardson Foundation and Yale University International Security Studies for the Predoctoral Fellowship that allowed me to do the bulk of the writing of this dissertation. Thanks also to the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University, and John Gaddis and the incomparable Ann Carter-Drier at ISS.
    [Show full text]
  • A Thesis Entitled Yoshimoto Taka'aki, Communal Illusion, and The
    A Thesis entitled Yoshimoto Taka’aki, Communal Illusion, and the Japanese New Left by Manuel Yang Submitted as partial fulfillment for requirements for The Master of Arts Degree in History ________________________ Adviser: Dr. William D. Hoover ________________________ Adviser: Dr. Peter Linebaugh ________________________ Dr. Alfred Cave ________________________ Graduate School The University of Toledo (July 2005) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is customary in a note of acknowledgments to make the usual mea culpa concerning the impossibility of enumerating all the people to whom the author has incurred a debt in writing his or her work, but, in my case, this is far truer than I can ever say. This note is, therefore, a necessarily abbreviated one and I ask for a small jubilee, cancellation of all debts, from those that I fail to mention here due to lack of space and invidiously ungrateful forgetfulness. Prof. Peter Linebaugh, sage of the trans-Atlantic commons, who, as peerless mentor and comrade, kept me on the straight and narrow with infinite "grandmotherly kindness" when my temptation was always to break the keisaku and wander off into apostate digressions; conversations with him never failed to recharge the fiery voltage of necessity and desire of historical imagination in my thinking. The generously patient and supportive free rein that Prof. William D. Hoover, the co-chair of my thesis committee, gave me in exploring subjects and interests of my liking at my own preferred pace were nothing short of an ideal that all academic apprentices would find exceedingly enviable; his meticulous comments have time and again mercifully saved me from committing a number of elementary factual and stylistic errors.
    [Show full text]
  • US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities & the American
    Volume 5 | Issue 5 | Article ID 2414 | May 02, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities & the American Way of War from World War II to Iraq Mark Selden A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing have these experiences shaped the Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese American way of war over six decades in Cities and the American Way of War which the United States has been a major from World War II to Iraq [*] actor in important wars? The issues have particular salience in an epoch whose Mark Selden central international discourse centers on terror and the War on Terror, one in World War II was a landmark in the which the terror inflicted on development and deployment ofnoncombatants by the major powers is technologies of mass destructionfrequently neglected. associated with air power, notably the Strategic Bombing and International B-29 bomber, napalm and the atomic Law bomb. An estimated 50 to 70 million people lay dead in its wake. In a sharp Bombs had been dropped from the air as reversal of the pattern of World War I early as 1849 on Venice (from balloons) and of most earlier wars, a substantial and 1911 in Libya (from planes). majority of the dead were noncombatants. [1] The air war, which reached peak intensity with the area bombing, including atomic bombing, of major European and Japanese cities in its final year, had a devastating impact on noncombatant populations. What is the logic and what have been the consequences—for its victims, for subsequent global patterns of warfare and for international law—of new technologies of mass destruction and their application associated with the rise of air power and bombing technology in World War II and after? Above all, how 1 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF however, proved extraordinarily elusive then and since.
    [Show full text]
  • Biographies & Non-Fiction
    TOP NOTCH Biographies & Non-Fiction Southern Lehigh Public Library 3200 Preston Lane Center Valley, PA 18034 (610) 282-8825 Lists of award winners available at www.solehipl.org Southern Lehigh Public Library Jan 2016 Applebaum, Anne Egan, Timothy Philbrick, Nathaniel Gulag (2004) 365.45 APP The Worst Hard Time (2006) 978.032 EGA In the Heart of the Sea (2000) 910.9 PHI Atkinson, Rick Foreman, Amanda Poitier, Sidney An Army at Dawn (2002) 940.5423 ATK Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (2000) This Life (1980) B POITIER B DEVONSHIRE Ball, Edward Power, Samantha Slaves in the Family (1998) 975.7 BAL Gordon-Reed, Annette A Problem from Hell (2003) 364.15 POW The Hemingses of Monticello (2008) Berg, A. Scott 973.460922 GOR Sage, Lorna Lindbergh (1999) B LINDBERGH Bad Blood (2000) 942.9 SAG Graham, Katharine Bird, Kai Personal History (1997) B GRAHAM Schiff, Stacy American Prometheus (2005) Vera (2000) 920 SCH B OPPENHEIMER Hampl, Patricia A Romantic Education (1981) 943.712 HAM Sheehan, Neil Bix, Herbert P. A Bright Shining Lie (1988) 959.704 SHE Hirohito and the Making of Japan (2001) Hillenbrand, Lauren 952 BIX Seabiscuit (2001) 798.4 HIL Smith, Patti Just Kids (2010) 782.42166 SMI Boo, Katherine Kaplan, Justin Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012) Walt Whitman (1980) B WHITMAN Solomon, Andrew 305.5690954 BOO The Noonday Demon (2001) 616.85 SOL Kidder, Tracy Boyle, Kevin The Soul of a New Machine (1981) 621.3819 KID Stone, Ruth Arc of Justice (2004) 345.73 BOY Ordinary Words (1999) 811.54 STO Lopez, Barry Holstun Carlson, Rachel Arctic Dreams (1986) 508.98 LOP Weiner, Jonathan The Sea Around Us (1979) 551.46 CAR The Beak of the Finch (1994) 598.8 WEI Lukas, J.
    [Show full text]
  • PDF Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Ii John W. Dower - Book Free
    PDF Embracing Defeat: Japan In The Wake Of World War Ii John W. Dower - book free Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Free Download, Read Best Book Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Online, Download Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II E- Books, Download pdf Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II, Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II PDF Download, Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Popular Download, online free Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II, Read Online Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Book, Download Online Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Book, Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Ebooks Free, PDF Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Free Download, Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Books Online, I W as So Mad Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II John W . Dower Ebook Download, Free Download Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Best Book, Read Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Online Free, Read Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Full Collection, Free Download Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Books [E-BOOK] Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Full eBook, Read Best Book Em bracing Defeat: Japan in the W ake of W orld W ar II Online, by John W .
    [Show full text]
  • Non-Fiction Inside Biosphere 2: Earth Science Under Glass by Mary Kay Carson; with Photographs 304.2 CAR by Tom Uhlman
    To borrow the titles mentioned below, please contact Circulation desk: 022-26724024 or write to us at [email protected] Call. No Particulars Non-Fiction Inside Biosphere 2: Earth Science Under Glass By Mary Kay Carson; with photographs 304.2 CAR by Tom Uhlman. 2016 “A Problem From Hell": America And The Age of Genocide by Samantha Power. 304.663 POW 2013 305.42 SLA Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter. 2015 305.55 STA Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr. 1982 323.1196073 BAU March Against Fear by Ann Bausum. 2016 International Public Relations And Public Diplomacy: Communication And 327.11 INT Engagement by Guy J. Golan. 2015 330.019 THA Misbehaving: The Making Of Behavioral Economics by Richard H. Thaler. 2016 House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty And The Rise of Modern Finance 332.12 MOR by Ron Chernow. 2001 338.2728 YER The Prize: The Epic Quest For Oil, Money, & Power By Daniel Yergin. 2009 Making Curriculum Pop: Developing Literacies In All Content Areas By Pam Goble, 371.334 GOB Ed.D. And Ryan R. Goble. 2016 378.73 PET Peterson's Two-Year Colleges 2014 by Bernadette Webster, managing editor. 2013 We Are Market Basket: The Story Of The Unlikely Grassroots Movement That Saved 381.45 KOR A Beloved Business by Daniel Korschun & Grant Welker. 2015 381.457 WIT How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention by Stephen Witt. 2016 Word Power Made Easy: The Complete Handbook For Building A Superior 428.1 LEW vocabulary by Norman Lewis.
    [Show full text]
  • Phoenix from the Ashes: Saving the Emperor and Creating
    John W. Dower. Embracing Defeat. Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. 676 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-393-04686-1. Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb Published on H-US-Japan (June, 2000) [Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein Dower's Japan in War and Peace: Selected Es‐ are those of the reviewer and not of his employer says (1993) is a corpus of previously published ar‐ or any other federal agency.] ticles informed by Dower's own brilliant introduc‐ John W. Dower, Elting E. Morison Professor of tory essay "The Useful War." In addition, he History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol‐ served as executive producer of the documentary ogy, received his doctorate in History and Far film entitled _Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, Eastern Languages from Harvard University in which was an Academy Award nominee in 1988. 1972. Professor Dower's interests are concentrat‐ Because of these and other significant works [1], ed in modern Japanese history and his scholar‐ John Dower has significantly affected how Ameri‐ ship has centered on issues of war, peace, power, cans and other westerners view Japan and the Ja‐ and justice in Japan and in United States-Japanese panese as he considers topics such as racism and relations. He has published numerous articles and stereotypes as well as socioeconomic and political a dozen books, including War Without Mercy: factors. Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986), a Na‐ In a synthesis entitled The Clash (1997), histo‐ tional Book Critics Circle Award winner for Non‐ rian Walter LaFeber reported the cultural and fiction and the winner of the Ohira Masayoshi diplomatic relations between the United States Memorial Prize for distinguished Asian-Pacific and Japan from 1850 through the 1990s, while scholarship.
    [Show full text]
  • Pulitzer Prize Winners and Finalists
    WINNERS AND FINALISTS 1917 TO PRESENT TABLE OF CONTENTS Excerpts from the Plan of Award ..............................................................2 PULITZER PRIZES IN JOURNALISM Public Service ...........................................................................................6 Reporting ...............................................................................................24 Local Reporting .....................................................................................27 Local Reporting, Edition Time ..............................................................32 Local General or Spot News Reporting ..................................................33 General News Reporting ........................................................................36 Spot News Reporting ............................................................................38 Breaking News Reporting .....................................................................39 Local Reporting, No Edition Time .......................................................45 Local Investigative or Specialized Reporting .........................................47 Investigative Reporting ..........................................................................50 Explanatory Journalism .........................................................................61 Explanatory Reporting ...........................................................................64 Specialized Reporting .............................................................................70
    [Show full text]
  • H-Diplo Roundtables, Vol. XIII, No. 8
    2011 H-Diplo Roundtable Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse Roundtable Web/Production Editor: George Fujii H-Diplo Roundtable Review www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables Introduction by T. Christopher Jespersen Volume XIII, No. 8 (2011) 26 October 2011 Hiroshi Kitamura. Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. 264 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8014-4599-6 (hardcover, $35.00). Stable URL: http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-XIII-8.pdf Contents Introduction by T. Christopher Jespersen, North Georgia College & State University ............ 2 Review by Michael A. Barnhart, SUNY-Stony Brook ................................................................. 5 Review by Mire Koikari, Women’s Studies, University of Hawai‘............................................. 7 Review by Lary May, University of Minnesota ....................................................................... 11 Review by John Trumpbour, Harvard University .................................................................... 16 Author’s Response by Hiroshi Kitamura, College of William and Mary ................................. 19 Copyright © 2011 H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for non-profit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author(s), web location, date of publication, H-Diplo, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses, contact the H-Diplo editorial staff
    [Show full text]
  • The Pulitzer Prize General Nonfiction Winners
    The Pulitzer Prize General Nonfiction Winners . 2015 Elizabeth Kolbert The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. An exploration of nature that forces readers to consider the threat posed by human behavior to a world of astonishing diversity. 2014 Dan Fagin Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation. A book that deftly combines investigative reporting and historical research to probe a New Jersey seashore town’s cluster of childhood cancers linked to water and air pollution. 2013 Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys by Gilbert King. A richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle. 2012 The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. An exploration of a period of human history—the “Renaissance”—that seemed especially devoted to the pursuit of beauty and pleasure. During the Renaissance, people began to move away from supernatural explanations and began, more and more, to see the universe as consisting of matter. 2011 The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. An elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science. 2010 The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman. A well documented narrative that examines the terrifying doomsday competition between two superpowers and how weapons of mass destruction still imperil humankind.
    [Show full text]
  • Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War
    VETERAN NARRATIVES AND THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by John A. Wood August, 2011 Examining Committee Members: Kenneth L. Kusmer, Advisory Chair, Department of History, Temple University Gregory J.W. Urwin, Department of History, Temple University James Hilty, Department of History, Temple University Stanley N. Katz, External Member, Princeton University © Copyright 2011 by John Wood ii ABSTRACT This dissertation is a comprehensive study of the content, author demographics, publishing history, and media representation of the most prominent Vietnam veteran memoirs published between 1967 and 2005. These personal narratives are important because they have affected the collective memory of the Vietnam War for decades. The primary focus of this study is an analysis of how veterans’ memoirs depict seven important topics: the demographics of American soldiers, combat, the Vietnamese people, race relations among U.S. troops, male-female relationships, veterans’ postwar lives, and war-related political issues. The central theme that runs through these analyses is that these seven topics are depicted in ways that show veteran narratives represent constructed memories of the past, not infallible records of historical events. One reoccurring indication of this is that while memoirists’ portrayals are sometimes supported by other sources and reflect historical reality, other times they clash with facts and misrepresent what actually happened. Another concern of this dissertation is the relationship of veteran memoirs to broader trends in public remembrance of the Vietnam War, and how and why some books, but not others, were able to achieve recognition and influence.
    [Show full text]