cover image The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation

The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation

Tom Engelhardt, Tom Engelard. Basic Books, $25 (351pp) ISBN 978-0-465-01984-7

Freelance writer Engelhardt here traces the roots of American ``triumphalism'' back to early New England, where the massacre of Indians set the pattern for the self-justified slaughter of external enemies, a ritual that would be replayed endlessly not only in life but also in fiction, movies, toys and comics. In his sprawling meditation, he considers the effect of our ``loss of enemy'' when the Japanese surrendered in 1945. In his tedious recap of the Vietnam tragedy Engelhardt suggests that the American public's inability to view the Viet Cong as a savage, lesser adversary contributed to our becoming ``the world's most extraordinary [because least expected] losers.'' The desire to create a Third World battlefield with maximum U.S. weaponry and minimum U.S. casualties was briefly satisfied, he contends, by the Gulf War with its seemingly bloodless, machine-versus-machine destructiveness. America, according to Engelhardt, is still yearning for a revival of our national identity via the victory culture, ``the story of their slaughter and our triumph.'' (Jan.)