Crash course : from the good war to the forever war / H. Bruce Franklin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Franklin, H. Bruce (Howard Bruce), 1934-2024, author.

Series:

War culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Franklin, H. Bruce (Howard Bruce), 1934-2024.

Franklin, H. Bruce.

War and society.

History.

United States--History, Military--20th century.

United States.

History, Military.

War and society--United States--History--20th century.

Historians--United States--Biography.

Historians.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

Protest movements.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

History.

Military history.

Physical Description:

ix, 315 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2018]

Summary:

"Growing up during the Second World War, H. Bruce Franklin believed what he was told: that America's victory would lead to a new era of world peace. Like most Americans, he was soon led to believe in a world wide Communist conspiracy that menaced the United States, forcing the nation into a disastrous war in Korea. But once he joined the U.S. Air Force and began flying top-secret missions as a navigator and intelligence officer, what he learned was eye-opening: that even as the U.S. preached about peace and freedom, it was engaging in an endless cycle of warfare, bringing devastation and oppression to fledgling democracies across the globe. Now, after fifty years as a renowned cultural historian, Franklin offers a set of hard-learned lessons about modern American history. Crash Course is essential reading for anyone who wonders how America ended up where it is today: with a deeply divided and disillusioned populace, led by a dysfunctional government, and mired in unwinnable wars. It also finds startling parallels between America's foreign military exploits and the equally brutal tactics used on the home front to crush organized labor, antiwar, and civil rights movements."--Dust jacket flap.

"How did the mightiest nation in the history of the planet end up forever fighting unwinnable wars under a dysfunctional government despised by an increasingly divided citizenry? To help make sense of this crash course, Bruce Franklin offers another kind of crash course, a personal odyssey through modern American history. Readers are plunged into history, partly by reliving some of the author's experience and evolving consciousness: born in the Depression, molded by the victory culture of World War II, acculturated into the anti-Communist frenzy of early postwar years, employed by Communists during the Korean War, plunged into class warfare while working on the New York waterfront, flying as a Strategic Air Command Arctic navigator and intelligence officer, becoming a leading anti-war and progressive activist and thus a target of COINTELPRO, and emerging as a trailblazing cultural historian. The main subject is America's wars, abroad against nations and peoples in every continent except Australia, at home along racial and class lines. By bringing multi-disciplinary knowledge and cutting-edge analysis to the forces that shaped and reshaped one American for eight decades, each chapter offers compelling and eye-opening reading to 21st-century Americans"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The last victory?

The bombs bursting in air, or, How we lost World War II

New connections

Working for communists during the Korean War

On the water front

Thirteen confessions of a Cold Warrior

Wake-up time

Burning illusions

French connections

Coming home

The war comes home.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-297) and index.

ISBN:

9781978800915

1978800916

9781978801202

1978801203

OCLC:

1027824789