World War II shaped the United States in profound ways, and this new book--the first in the Legacies of War series--explores one of the most significant changes it fostered: a dramatic increase in ethnic and religious tolerance. A Nation Forged in War is the first full-length study of how large-scale mobilization during the Second World War helped to dissolve long-standing differences among white soldiers of widely divergent backgrounds. Never before or since have so many Americans served in the armed forces at one time: more than 15 million donned uniforms in the period from 1941 to 1945. Thomas Bruscino explores how these soldiers' shared experiences--enduring basic training, living far from home, engaging in combat--transformed their views of other ethnic groups and religious traditions. He further examines how specific military policies and practices worked to counteract old prejudices, and he makes a persuasive case that throwing together men of different regions, ethnicities, religions, and classes not only fostered a greater sense of tolerance but also forged a new American identity. When soldiers returned home after the war with these new attitudes, they helped reorder what it meant to be white in America. Using the presidential campaigns of Al Smith in 1928 and John F. Kennedy in 1960 as bookend events, Bruscino notes a key change in religious bias. Smith's defeat came at the end of a campaign rife with anti-Catholic sentiment; Kennedy's victory some three decades later proved that such religious bigotry was no longer an insurmountable obstacle. Despite such advances, Bruscino notes that the growing broad-mindedness produced by the war had limits: it did not extend to African Americans, whose own struggle for equality would dramatically mark the postwar decades. Extensively documented, A Nation Forged in War is one of the few books on the social and cultural impact of the World War II years. Scholars and students of military, ethnic, social, and religious history will be fascinated by this groundbreaking new volume.
In this timely Occasional Paper, Dr. Tom Bruscino analyzes a critical issue in the GWOT, and one which has bedeviled counterinsurgents past and present. He examines the role played by sanctuaries as they relate to irregular warfare in two conflicts. An active sanctuary refers to the practice of using territory outside the geographical limits of an irregular war to provide various forms of support to one side, usually the insurgent or guerrilla force. In the first case study, he looks at the United States' efforts to defeat the advantages gained by the Viet Cong (and later the North Vietnamese Army) by the use of sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War. In doing so, he points out the diplomatic, military, and economic challenges which develop when trying to prevent the use of transnational sanctuaries by irregular forces. In the second case study, he examines the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in the 1980s, but this time he does so from the perspective of the insurgency, the Mujahideen. Bruscino illustrates the advantages accrued by the Afghan resistance in the use of Pakistan as a sanctuary; the Soviet efforts to neutralize those advantages; and the Mujahideen's responses to overcome the Soviet actions. In both cases the author finds that the use of an active sanctuary by the insurgents was a major component of their eventual victory. Without a sanctuary it is hard to see how the Viet Cong/NVA or the Mujahideen could have succeeded. In regards to a sanctuary, it is hard to see how the U.S./South Vietnamese or the Soviet Union could have defeated the insurgencies. Active sanctuaries present the counterinsurgent with a host of military problems, but denying an insurgent the use of an active sanctuary is far more than a military task. All the elements of national power must be employed if one hopes to defeat the challenge posed by active sanctuaries. We at the Combat Studies Institute hope that the insights presented in this monograph will be of great value to military planners in the current war against terrorism.~
Rarely is it a good idea for any field of human endeavor to be dominated by a single theory aimed at addressing a pressing problem. However, such dominance has recently occurred in the American approach to counterinsurgency warfare. In recent years, driven by the perceived failures in the American war in Iraq, the United States military, and in particular the United States Army, has determined that when it comes to counterinsurgency, the population-centric approach is the only way to go. The population-centric approach dominates the Army's capstone manual on Counterinsurgency, Field Manual 3-24, a document published in late 2006 in order to help redress shortcomings in fighting the war in Iraq.1 The driving force behind the manual, General David Petraeus, took the principles contained therein with him to Iraq, applied them during the famous surge of 2007-2008, and ultimately turned that war around. According to this popular account, the population-centric approach had been vindicated, and it became something of received truth about how to prosecute counterinsurgency.
World War II shaped the United States in profound ways, and this new book--the first in the Legacies of War series--explores one of the most significant changes it fostered: a dramatic increase in ethnic and religious tolerance. A Nation Forged in War is the first full-length study of how large-scale mobilization during the Second World War helped to dissolve long-standing differences among white soldiers of widely divergent backgrounds. Never before or since have so many Americans served in the armed forces at one time: more than 15 million donned uniforms in the period from 1941 to 1945. Thomas Bruscino explores how these soldiers' shared experiences--enduring basic training, living far from home, engaging in combat--transformed their views of other ethnic groups and religious traditions. He further examines how specific military policies and practices worked to counteract old prejudices, and he makes a persuasive case that throwing together men of different regions, ethnicities, religions, and classes not only fostered a greater sense of tolerance but also forged a new American identity. When soldiers returned home after the war with these new attitudes, they helped reorder what it meant to be white in America. Using the presidential campaigns of Al Smith in 1928 and John F. Kennedy in 1960 as bookend events, Bruscino notes a key change in religious bias. Smith's defeat came at the end of a campaign rife with anti-Catholic sentiment; Kennedy's victory some three decades later proved that such religious bigotry was no longer an insurmountable obstacle. Despite such advances, Bruscino notes that the growing broad-mindedness produced by the war had limits: it did not extend to African Americans, whose own struggle for equality would dramatically mark the postwar decades. Extensively documented, A Nation Forged in War is one of the few books on the social and cultural impact of the World War II years. Scholars and students of military, ethnic, social, and religious history will be fascinated by this groundbreaking new volume.
The first comprehensive narrative of racism in America's World War II military and the resistance to it. America's World War II military was a force of unalloyed good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that's the story many Americans have long told themselves. Divisions offers a decidedly different view. Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military; of high command and ordinary GIs; and of African Americans, white Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Guglielmo argues that the military built not one color line, but a complex tangle of them. Taken together, they represented a sprawling structure of white supremacy. Freedom struggles arose in response, democratizing portions of the wartime military and setting the stage for postwar desegregation and the subsequent civil rights movements. But the costs of the military's color lines were devastating. They impeded America's war effort; undermined the nation's rhetoric of the Four Freedoms; further naturalized the concept of race; deepened many whites' investments in white supremacy; and further fractured the American people. Offering a dramatic narrative of America's World War II military and of the postwar world it helped to fashion, Guglielmo fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the war and of mid-twentieth-century America.
Thomas Bernhard is one of the greatest twentieth-century writers in the German language. Extinction, his last novel, takes the form of the autobiographical testimony of Franz-Josef Murau. The intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family, Murau lives in Rome in self-exile. Obsessed and angry with his identity as an Austrian, he resolves never to return to the family estate of Wolfsegg. But when news comes of his parents' deaths, he finds himself master of Wolfsegg and must decide its fate. Written in Bernhard's seamless style, Extinction is the ultimate proof of his extraordinary literary genius. "Strangely gripping. The glue that holds his remarkable novel together is the unique virtuosity of his imaginative prose, a highly original kind of writing that resembles musical patterns of theme, variations and recapitulation."—Steve Dowden, Washington Times "With a breathtaking sustained intensity . . . Bernhard assaults through the voice of Murau the modern world as exemplified by his birthplace, Austria."—Thomas McGonigle, Chicago Tribune Books "Perfectly balanced and continually interesting. . . . The particular fineness of Extinction lies in its depiction of a consciousness in action."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World "Bernhard's distinctive style . . . is caught with quite remarkable fidelity in David McLintock's excellent translation . . . . The work of a master."—W.E. Yates, New York Times Book Review "When Thomas Bernhard died, Austria lost one of its bravest authors . . . . David McLintock's translation . . . is exquisite. It presents an English far richer than most English language books . . . . Fresh, disturbed and punchy."—Benjamin Weissman, Los Angeles Times
Contemporary Corrections: A Critical Thinking Approach introduces readers to the essential elements of the US corrections system without drowning students in a sea of nonessential information. Unbiased and accessible, the text includes coverage of the history of corrections, alternatives to incarceration, probation/parole, race/ethnicity/gender issues in corrections, re-entry into the community, and more. The authors' unparalleled practical approach, reinforced by contemporary examples, illuminates the role corrections plays in our society. The authors have reinvigorated earlier work with additional content on international comparative data to increase our understanding of how prison officials in other nations have developed different types of responses to the problems that challenge every US correctional administrator, a new chapter on correctional personnel, and an integration of race and ethnicity issues throughout the book. Unrivaled in scope, this book offers undergraduates a concise but comprehensive introduction to corrections with textual materials and assignments designed to encourage students’ critical thinking skills.
This book represents the culmination of Thomas Elsaesser’s intense and passionate thinking about the Hollywood mind-game film from the previous two decades. In order to answer what the mind-game film is, why they exist, and how they function, Elsaesser maps the industrial-institutional challenges and constraints facing Hollywood, and the broader philosophic horizon within which American cinema thrives today. He demonstrates how the ‘Persistence of Hollywood’ continues as it has adapted to include new twists and turns, as well as revisions of past concerns, as film moves through the 21st century. Through examples such as Minority Report, Mulholland Drive, Source Code, and Back to the Future, Elsaesser explores how mind-game films challenge us and play games with our perception of reality, creating skepticism and (self-) doubt. He also highlights the mind-game film's tendency to intervene in a complex fashion in the political moment by questioning the dominant power’s intent to program both body and mind alike. Prescient and compelling, The Mind-Game Film will appeal to students, scholars, and enthusiasts of media studies, film studies, philosophy, and politics.
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