"Cultures of War distills a lifetime of reflection and scholarship, persuasively connecting aspects of the 'War of Terror' to Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, the better to illuminate the kind of wishful thinking-regardless of cultural difference-that is characteristic of modern warfare." National Book Award citation "Dower's Cultures of War is a thought-provoking, scholarly and deeply polemical book..." David Pilling, Financial Times "...a sobering analysis, one that defines the contours of the fast unfolding post-American world." Literary Review "Consistently perceptive." The Washington Post Cultures of War must be read by anyone interested in uncovering the intellectual and historical roots of the War on Terror." Military Times "The issues raised in this well-written study are important." The Tablet
John W. Dower is the author of Embracing Defeat, winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; War without Mercy, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Cultures of War. He is professor emeritus of history at MIT. In addition to authoring many books and articles about Japan and the United States in war and peace, he is a founder and codirector of the online “Visualizing Cultures” project established at MIT in 2002 and dedicated to the presentation of image-driven scholarship on East Asia in the modern world. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
"Consistently perceptive."
*Washington Post*
"A whopper of a book in both length and intellectual substance. . .
. The chapters on the U.S. incendiary and atomic bombing of Japan
and the start of the nuclear arms race could stand alone as the
wisest current treatment of that vexed history."
*Michael Sherry - American Scholar*
"Consistently perceptive."
*Gerard De Groot - Washington Post*
"A lucid and compelling example of how to learn from history,
rather than using it as an ideological weapon."
*Drew DeSilver - Seattle Times*
"Supplemented with visual images that are texts in themselves,
Dower’s book is a passionate and provocative excursion into the
comparative dynamics and pathologies of modern war."
*Glenn C. Altschuler - Philadelphia Inquirer*
"It takes a nimble mind, and a nimble hand, to link America’s
regrettable atrocities in the Philippines (whole villages were
burned to the ground and their occupants slaughtered) to the events
in Iraq. But Dower has the mind and the hand, making a compelling
case that, regardless of righteousness, nations with a culture of
war will, indeed, wage war. Dower’s wide-ranging, thought-provoking
book is less an analysis of policy than a dissection of actions and
the arguments that framed them…Dower’s arguments are deeply, and
compellingly, drawn."
*Scott Martelle - Los Angeles Times*
"Distills a lifetime of reflection and scholarship, persuasively
connecting aspects of the ‘War of Terror’ to Pearl Harbor and
Hiroshima, the better to illuminate the kind of wishful
thinking—regardless of cultural difference—that is characteristic
of modern warfare."
*National Book Award citation*
"Dower has found much new and revelatory to tell us about the
inanities and horrors of the Bush/Cheney years, and this book goes
much deeper—and raises devastating questions about the history we
think we know."
*Seymour M. Hersch, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11
to Abu Ghraib*
"A profoundly sobering reflection on war and the many cultures of
self-delusion that we, like all other mortal nations, continue to
ignore at ever deepening peril."
*Gar Alperovitz, author of The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb*
"An unrelenting, incisive, masterly comparative study."
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
This Pulitzer Prize-winning author critically examines American military history, leadership strategies, and foreign policies since 1941, noting parallels and differences between past and contemporary wars. (LJ 9/1/10) (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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