The creator of TomDispatch.com "focuses on the specific absurdities of American wars . . . strident, passionate, and problem-solving" ( Mother Jones).In 2008, when the US National Intelligence Council issued its latest report meant for the administration of newly elected president Barack Obama, it predicted that the planet's "sole superpower" would suffer a modest decline and a soft landing fifteen years hence. In his new book, The United States of Fea...

"In his searing new book . . . Engelhardt has composed a requiem for a nation turned upside down by the relentless pursuit of global power" (Karen J. Greenberg, author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State).As veteran author Tom Engelhardt argues, despite having a more massive, technologically advanced, and better-funded military than any other power on the planet, in the last decade and a half of constant war across the greater Middle East an...

The creator of TomDispatch.com "tackles our military fetish . . . He takes on our war-possessed world with clear-eyed, penetrating precision" ( Mother Jones).Tom Engelhardt, creator of the website TomDispatch.com, takes a scalpel to the American urge to dominate the globe. Tracing developments from 9/11 to present day, this is an unforgettable anatomy of a disaster that is yet to end.Since 2001, Tom Englehardt has written regular reports for his po...

"A book about secrets and surveillance . . . [from] one of the great forces on the side of clarity, democracy, openness, and really good writing" (Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark).In 1964, a book entitled The Invisible Government shocked Americans with its revelations of a growing world of intelligence agencies playing fast and loose around the planet, a secret government lodged inside the one they knew that even the president didn't fu...

"Let me tell you, America, of the hopes I had for you," Dorfman writes after the fall of the Twin Towers, remembering back to an earlier September 11 in 1973, when he was on the staff of Salvador Allende, then president of Chile, the day he was removed from office and murdered in a coup in which the U.S. government was complicit. "Beware the plague of victimhood, America . . . Nothing is more dangerous than a giant who is afraid."Included in Other Septembers, Many Americas are major...

Inspired by the Smithsonian's controversial exhibit on the Enola Gay, "excellent" essays examining America's attitudes toward her past ( Kirkus Reviews)."Our history has been held hostage by the righteous right—Legionnaires, Congressional Claghorns, and courtier-scholars—ever since Year One. From the winning of the West to Hiroshima, our nation's purity of purpose was never doubted. Along comes a platoon of independent-minded American histo...

From the dawn of the atomic age, art and popular culture have played an essential role interpreting nuclear issues to the public and investigating the implications of nuclear weapons to the future of human civilization. Political and social forces often seemed paralyzed in thinking beyond the advent of nuclear weapons and articulating a creative response to the dilemma posed by this apocalyptic technology. Art and popular culture are uniquely suited to grapple with the implications of the ...

"Written with great accuracy, detail, enthusiasm, and insight . . . a new perspective on the well-trodden story of the Arab Revolt" ( Military History Matters on its Book of the Year, Silver Award–winner).Striking where the enemy is weakest and melting away into the darkness before he can react. Never confronting a stronger force directly, but using audacity and surprise to confound and demoralize an opponent. Operations driven by good intelligence, area kn...

"A mesmerizing account that illuminates not just the Napoleonic wars but all of modern history . . . It reads like a novel" (Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of modern European history, UCLA).The twentieth century is usually seen as "the century of total war." But as the historian David A. Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon actually began much earlier, in the era of muskets, cannons, and sailing ships—in the age of Napoleon.In a sweeping, evo...

A look at the destructive history of science-for-profit, including its toll on the US pandemic response, by the author of A People's History of Science.Despite a facade of brilliant technological advances, American science has led humanity to the brink of interrelated disasters. In The Tragedy of American Science, historian of science Clifford D. Conner describes the dual processes by which this history has unfolded since the Second World War, add...

"Emma Griffin gives a new and powerful voice to the men and women whose blood and sweat greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution" (Tim Hitchcock, author of Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London).This "provocative study" looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class ( The New Yorker). The era didn't just bring ...

As the nation stands at a crossroads, this “valuable collection” urges us to reexamine the ideas and values of the American conservative tradition—offering “a bracing tonic for the present chaos” (The Washington Post).A groundbreaking collection of mainstream conservative writings since 1900, featuring pieces by Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Joan Didion, and moreWhat is American conservatism? What are its core beliefs and values? ...