Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq

by John W. Dower

Overview

Finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Nonfiction: The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian returns with a groundbreaking comparative study of the dynamics and pathologies of war in modern times.

Over recent decades, John W. Dower, one of America’s preeminent historians, has addressed the roots and consequences of war from multiple perspectives. In War Without Mercy (1986), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he described and analyzed the brutality that attended World War II in the Pacific, as seen from both the Japanese and the American sides. Embracing Defeat (1999), winner of numerous honors including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, dealt with Japan’s struggle to start over in a shattered land in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War, when the defeated country was occupied by the U.S.-led Allied powers.

Turning to an even larger canvas, Dower now examines the cultures of war revealed by four powerful events—Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, and the invasion of Iraq in the name of a war on terror. The list of issues examined and themes explored is wide-ranging: failures of intelligence and imagination, wars of choice and “strategic imbecilities,” faith-based secular thinking as well as more overtly holy wars, the targeting of noncombatants, and the almost irresistible logic—and allure—of mass destruction. Dower’s new work also sets the U.S. occupations of Japan and Iraq side by side in strikingly original ways.

One of the most important books of this decade, Cultures of War offers comparative insights into individual and institutional behavior and pathologies that transcend “cultures” in the more traditional sense, and that ultimately go beyond war-making alone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393061505
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/07/2010
Pages:	640
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

John W. Dower is the author of Embracing Defeat, winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; War without Mercy, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Cultures of War. He is professor emeritus of history at MIT. In addition to authoring many books and articles about Japan and the United States in war and peace, he is a founder and codirector of the online “Visualizing Cultures” project established at MIT in 2002 and dedicated to the presentation of image-driven scholarship on East Asia in the modern world. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An unrelenting, incisive, masterly comparative study." —-Kirkus Starred Review

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review.

In this fascinating study, a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award, Pulitzer prize-wining historian Dower (Embracing Defeat) draws parallels between the illusion-ridden Japanese top leadership prior to December 7, 1941 and the fecklessness and over-confidence of the Bush Administration after September 11, 2001. The author compares the post-war occupations as well, stating that "Wishful thinking trumped rational analysis in Tokyo in 1941 and Washington in the run-up to war with Iraq." Exploring "the similar rationales and rhetoric of Japan's war of choice in 1941 and America's invasion of Iraq in 2003," he looks at the way in which emotion-laden terms like "Pearl Harbor" and "ground zero" have been co-opted for the War against Terror. And similarly mistaken, in Dower's view, were the beliefs of both commands in the efficacy of bombings targeting civilian populations. Equally telling is his comparison between the occupation of Japan (and to a lesser extent, Germany) and the occupation of Iraq. After Japan's surrender, the U.S. military formulated a set of pre-determined goals based upon New Deal principles that laid the groundwork for Japan's extraordinary economic recovery. In Dower's view, the U.S. not only abdicated responsibility for the Iraqi occupation, but ignored the potential of the sectarian divisions that have erupted there.
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Publishers Weekly

"Among Dower’s gifts is a striking ability to embed provocative conclusions within such rich analysis that they cannot be dismissed as outrageous."

American Scholar - Michael Sherry

Wars often happen because decision makers make bad decisions. But we elect smart people to make reasoned decisions. Dower (history, emeritus, MIT; Embracing Defeat), a winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, among other honors, examines four cases in which he asserts that a combination of blindness, arrogance, strategic imbecility, and institutional failures of intelligence led to massively bad results. A great deal of his discussion deals with the—in his view—disastrous George W. Bush presidency and its obstinate refusal to replace preconceptions and posturing with fact. Much of his argument involves the psychological and institutional similarities between the Japanese decision for war with America and the equally misguided American attack on Iraq. Wherever destruction is possible, someone will justify it on the grounds of reason and morality in the name of God; is there a way to avoid that trap? VERDICT This dense, well-documented historical survey sometimes descends into anti-Bush diatribe but casts a different light on the decision to use the bomb on Japan and to use shock and awe on Iraq. Best for dispassionate students of 20th-century war history who are open to iconoclastic opinion; with extensive notes.—Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS

Library Journal

It's not an easy book, but it is consistently perceptive. Dower examines Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Sept. 11 and the second Iraq War, drawing disconcerting linkages.
—The Washington Post

Gerard De Groot

"It takes a nimble mind, and a nimble hand, to link America’s regrettable atrocities in the Philippines (whole villages were burned to the ground and their occupants slaughtered) to the events in Iraq. But Dower has the mind and the hand, making a compelling case that, regardless of righteousness, nations with a culture of war will, indeed, wage war. Dower’s wide-ranging, thought-provoking book is less an analysis of policy than a dissection of actions and the arguments that framed them…Dower’s arguments are deeply, and compellingly, drawn."

Los Angeles Times - Scott Martelle

"Dower has found much new and revelatory to tell us about the inanities and horrors of the Bush/Cheney years, and this book goes much deeper—and raises devastating questions about the history we think we know."

Seymour M. Hersch

"Distills a lifetime of reflection and scholarship, persuasively connecting aspects of the ‘War of Terror’ to Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, the better to illuminate the kind of wishful thinking—regardless of cultural difference—that is characteristic of modern warfare."

National Book Award citation

"A profoundly sobering reflection on war and the many cultures of self-delusion that we, like all other mortal nations, continue to ignore at ever deepening peril."

Gar Alperovitz

"Supplemented with visual images that are texts in themselves, Dower’s book is a passionate and provocative excursion into the comparative dynamics and pathologies of modern war."

Philadelphia Inquirer - Glenn C. Altschuler

"A whopper of a book in both length and intellectual substance. . . . The chapters on the U.S. incendiary and atomic bombing of Japan and the start of the nuclear arms race could stand alone as the wisest current treatment of that vexed history."

Michael Sherryn Scholar

"Consistently perceptive."

Washington Post

"A lucid and compelling example of how to learn from history, rather than using it as an ideological weapon."

Seattle Times - Drew DeSilver

A lucid and compelling example of how to learn from history, rather than using it as an ideological weapon.--Drew DeSilver "Seattle Times"

An unrelenting, incisive, masterly comparative study.-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"

Consistently perceptive.--Gerard De Groot "Washington Post"

Distills a lifetime of reflection and scholarship, persuasively connecting aspects of the 'War of Terror' to Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, the better to illuminate the kind of wishful thinking--regardless of cultural difference--that is characteristic of modern warfare.--National Book Award citation

Dower has found much new and revelatory to tell us about the inanities and horrors of the Bush/Cheney years, and this book goes much deeper--and raises devastating questions about the history we think we know.--Seymour M. Hersch, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

It takes a nimble mind, and a nimble hand, to link America's regrettable atrocities in the Philippines (whole villages were burned to the ground and their occupants slaughtered) to the events in Iraq. But Dower has the mind and the hand, making a compelling case that, regardless of righteousness, nations with a culture of war will, indeed, wage war. Dower's wide-ranging, thought-provoking book is less an analysis of policy than a dissection of actions and the arguments that framed them...Dower's arguments are deeply, and compellingly, drawn.--Scott Martelle "Los Angeles Times"

Supplemented with visual images that are texts in themselves, Dower's book is a passionate and provocative excursion into the comparative dynamics and pathologies of modern war.--Glenn C. Altschuler "Philadelphia Inquirer"

A whopper of a book in both length and intellectual substance. . . . The chapters on the U.S. incendiary and atomic bombing of Japan and the start of the nuclear arms race could stand alone as the wisest current treatment of that vexed history.--Michael Sherry "American Scholar"

Consistently perceptive.-- "Washington Post"

A profoundly sobering reflection on war and the many cultures of self-delusion that we, like all other mortal nations, continue to ignore at ever deepening peril.--Gar Alperovitz, author of The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb

From the Publisher

Dower provides a scholarly but lively—and sometimes acerbic—examination of governments (and others) making war by choice and using force to try to cow an enemy, examining Pearl Harbor, WWII terror bombing, Hiroshima, 9/11, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Kevin Foley’s voice is strong but not particularly personable, though his reading is precise and well paced and his inflections make meanings clear. The result is a flat voice that occasionally and unexpectedly achieves emotional expressiveness. But over the long haul—and the book is long—repetitiveness in his modulations gives the impression of droning on. Relatively few, but prominent, mispronunciations are jarring. While this is not a poor reading, this important book deserves better. W.M. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2010 - AudioFile