House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American PowerHarperCollins, 4 juni 2007 - 1073 sidor "A masterful achievement...[Carroll's] prose is elegant, his viewpoint bold." —Howard Zinn, author of The People's History of the United States "One cannot understand the impact of the Pentagon on US foreign policy. . . without reading James Carroll's House of War." —Lawrence Korb, former Undersecretary of Defence under Ronald Reagan From the National Book Award–winning author of An American Requiem and Constantine's Sword comes a sweeping yet intimate look at the Pentagon and its vast—often hidden—impact on America. This landmark, myth-shattering work chronicles the most powerful institution in America, the people who created it, and the pathologies it has spawned. James Carroll proves a controversial thesis: the Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more. To argue his case, he marshals a trove of often chilling evidence. He recounts how "the Building" and its denizens achieved what Eisenhower called "a disastrous rise of misplaced power"—from the unprecedented aerial bombing of Germany and Japan during World War II to the "shock and awe" of Iraq. He charts the colossal U.S. nuclear buildup, which far outpaced that of the USSR, and has outlived it. He reveals how consistently the Building has found new enemies just as old threats—and funding—evaporate. He demonstrates how Pentagon policy brought about U.S. indifference to an epidemic of genocide during the 1990s. And he shows how the forces that attacked the Pentagon on 9/11 were set in motion exactly sixty years earlier, on September 11, 1941, when ground was broken for the house of war. Carroll draws on rich personal experience (his father was a top Pentagon official for more than twenty years) as well as exhaustive research and dozens of extensive interviews with Washington insiders. The result is a grand yet intimate work of history, unashamedly polemical and personal but unerringly factual. With a breadth and focus that no other book could muster, it explains what America has become over the past sixty years. |
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... LeMay. The Whiz Kid. Leslie Groves Does It All. The Other September 11s two: THE ABSOLUTE WEAPON • 40 Truman's “Decision.” Stimson's Defense. Not Japan, but Moscow? Atomic Forgetfulness. Groves's Toboggan. The Second Coming in Wrath ...
... LeMay. In 1960, LeMay, by then a four-star general, was vice chief of staff of the Air Force, living next door to my family's house on Generals' Row. From my place at the basketball hoop on the garage, I often glimpsed him going to his ...
... LeMay was our Spartacus, our Ben-Hur, our Julius Caesar. And like Caesar, he was known to be ruthless. “I'll tell you what war is about” — here is a typical pronouncement of LeMay's, the sort of mal mot that would be quoted in whispers ...
... LeMay increased.63 The B-17 missions were nightmarish under the best of circumstances. The planes flew in close formation, with the most dangerous point being flight through the “box” of antiaircraft fire that awaited almost every ...
... LeMay's attitudes came some months after that first late-January flight into Germany, when he was so sure that precision was as possible for American airmen as it was preferable. On August 17, 1943, an assault force of 146 B-17s was to ...
Innehåll
1 | |
40 | |
3 The Cold War Begins | 103 |
4 SelfFulfilling Paranoia | 161 |
5 The Turning Point | 227 |
6 The Exorcism | 293 |
7 Upstream | 345 |
8 Unending War | 418 |
Acknowledgments | 515 |
Notes | 517 |
Bibliography | 609 |
Index | 624 |
Photo Credits | 658 |
Back Flap | 659 |
Back Cover | 660 |
Spine | 661 |
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House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power James Carroll Begränsad förhandsgranskning - 2007 |
House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power James Carroll Fragmentarisk förhandsgranskning - 2006 |
House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power James Carroll Ingen förhandsgranskning - 2006 |