Forthcoming releases consider popular opinion on armed conflict from ancient Greece through the present.
American Rule
Political commentator Sexton, who in previous books covered the 2016 presidential election (The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters upon Your Shore) and analyzed toxic masculinity (The Man They Wanted Me to Be), examines the narratives that popular culture perpetuates about America’s wars, and how those narratives shape the collective memory and national identity.
The Beginning or the End
When WWII ended, MGM began work on the big-budget feature that gives this book its name. Mitchell (The Tunnels) explains how the film, a docudrama on the Manhattan Project, underwent a number of heavy-handed rewrites, was released in 1947, and failed. PW’s review said the script “became a battleground between scientists, who wanted the film to show the true horror of nuclear war, and the military, which wanted to justify the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and undermine calls to place nuclear weapons under international control.”
more
Culture in the Third Reich
Föllmer, associate professor of modern history at the University of Amsterdam, delves into public life and popular culture in Nazi Germany and examines the pairing of propaganda with art and entertainment, offering insight into how the regime legitimized its agenda.
Gods of War
Historians Lacey and Murray examine six major military rivalries, among them Scipio vs. Hannibal and Rommel vs. Patton, to show how their battles changed the landscape of the world, of warfare itself, and of ongoing thinking about conflict. PW’s review noted that while the general vs. general approach has been used before, the authors “deliver a fresh take on the formula” by looking at the commanders’ personalities and the evolution of combat.
more
Strategic Humanism
Hauer splits her teaching time between the great books program at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.Mex., and the U.S. Air Force Academy, where she’s the Lyon Chair of Professional Ethics. In this collection, she illuminates the work of the humanistic thinkers of ancient Greece—Homer and Aristotle, to name two—which deeply influenced the character of Western military leadership and cultural attitudes about war. The essays explore the connection between ancient and modern thinking in practical terms that urge the reader away from the notion that a technological solution can be found for every problem.—
