Crash course
Subtitle: from the good war to the forever war
By: H. Bruce Franklin
Series: War culture; War culture
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 315
ISBN-13: 9781978800915; 9781978801202
Subjects: Protest movements; Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Historians; War and society; Military History; Biography; History
Description: "How did the mightiest nation in the history of the planet end up forever fighting unwinnable wars under a dysfunctional government despised by an increasingly divided citizenry? To help make sense of this crash course, Bruce Franklin offers another kind of crash course, a personal odyssey through modern American history. Readers are plunged into history, partly by reliving some of the author's experience and evolving consciousness: born in the Depression, molded by the victory culture of World War II, acculturated into the anti-Communist frenzy of early postwar years, employed by Communists during the Korean War, plunged into class warfare while working on the New York waterfront, flying as a Strategic Air Command Arctic navigator and intelligence officer, becoming a leading anti-war and progressive activist and thus a target of COINTELPRO, and emerging as a trailblazing cultural historian. The main subject is America's wars, abroad against nations and peoples in every continent except Australia, at home along racial and class lines. By bringing multi-disciplinary knowledge and cutting-edge analysis to the forces that shaped and reshaped one American for eight decades, each chapter offers compelling and eye-opening reading to 21st-century Americans"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The last victory?; title: The bombs bursting in air, or, how we lost World War II; title: New connections; title: Working for communists during the Korean War; title: On the water front; title: Thirteen confessions of a Cold Warrior; title: Wake up time; title: Burning illusions; title: French connections; title: Coming home; title: The war comes home.