United States History - Southern Region, Executive Branch, Military Policy, U.S. Politics - General & Miscellaneous, United States Armed Forces

House of War

Name: House of War
Author: James Carroll
ISBN: 9780618187805

by Carroll, James

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Overview

From the National Book Awardwinning 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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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

To a person, our editors pronounce this provocative, profoundly unsettling history of the Pentagon "unputdownable." National Book Award winner James Carroll draws on exhaustive research, extensive interviews, and personal history (his father was a prominent Defense Department official) to chronicle the rise of both "the Building" -- a graceless five-sided edifice looming over the Potomac -- and the powerful institution it has come to symbolize. Sure to be one of the year's most talked-about books, House of War is a wag-the-dog cautionary tale that exposes the dangerously unchecked power of America's military establishment.

From the Publisher

"A prodigious historical synthesis, with pressing importance for our times, and also a deeply engaging story."—Tracy Kidder, author of My Detachment: A Memoir

House of War is a masterful achievement...[Carroll's] prose is elegant, his viewpoint bold."—Howard Zinn, author of The People's History of the United States

"[Carroll has] the historical depth, elegance of style, and moral complexity to have taken the full measure of [the Pentagon]."—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"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

[An] unequivocally mesmerizing account. . . . Certain to be one of the most talked-about nonfiction books of the season."

Booklist, ALA

"[James Carroll] brings to shocking life the truth of Randolph Bourne's dictum: 'War is the health of the state.'"—Garry Wills, author of Nixon Agonistes and Henry Adams and the Making of America

"Altogether excellent, and essential for understanding the birth of America's empire." Kirkus Reviews, Starred

"An aggressively compelling history." Publishers Weekly, Starred

William Grimes

Although House of War presents itself as a history of the Pentagon, it is not. Rather, it is a highly detailed, often repetitious recounting of American foreign policy, especially nuclear policy, from the 1940's to the present, with the building looming darkly in the background, like Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. The Pentagon is a metaphor more than a subject, explored most convincingly when Mr. Carroll describes his personal relationship to it.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Carroll would make a perfect NPR morning-show host, his sensitive, low, smooth voice the perfect background noise for sleepy yuppies getting ready for work. Reading his own book, a study of the Pentagon's outsize influence on postwar American life, Carroll is soothing and inoffensive. His reading is so uninflected that it veers on indistinctness or narcolepsy. Early-morning drivers should probably avoid listening to Carroll, for fear of being lulled into sleep. And yet, careful attention reveals a fine, subtle reading. Carroll lets his words speak for themselves, avoiding underlining or emphasizing specific words or phrases in his text. For some readers, that might be a recipe for being driven crazy; for others, it will allow for an uninfluenced reading of the text, whereby readers can listen as they might read-picking out their own points of emphasis. A little more emotion, though, probably wouldn't have hurt. Simultaneous release with the Houghton Mifflin hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 10). (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Most Americans may assume that the Pentagon plays a central role in formulating not only U.S. military but also foreign policy, yet this was not always so. Carroll (Constantine's Sword) argues that America's emergence as a nuclear superpower catapulted the defense establishment to the forefront in shaping military and foreign policy and, consequently, domestic policy. He contends that the Pentagon's influence is now virtually unchecked, beyond even the direct control of the commander in chief. Chronicling the ascent of America's military establishment from 1943 to the aftermath of 9/11, Carroll uses the Pentagon as a metaphor for a U.S. political culture that values military power over human rights and seeks to project U.S. influence and values abroad by force, if necessary, whether invited by other countries or not. Such values are a stark departure from America's past, when the public feared a large, professional military and imposed strict civilian control to limit the extent of its influence. With such broad and controversial claims, Carroll's theses will be disputed, yet his argument is well documented and persuasively made. He also relates his personal struggle to come to terms with the values of his father, a general who served in the Pentagon and later in the FBI as a counter-espionage agent and consistently supported the defense establishment's positions. Certain to be a widely read and discussed book, this is worthy of space on the shelves of all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/06.]-Thomas J. Baldino, Wilkes Univ., Wilkes-Barre, PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The biography of a vast building that "came to possess agency-the capacity to act in ways that transcended the wills and purposes of the people who claimed responsibility for the Defense Department at any given time."National Book Award-winner Carroll (Crusade, 2004, etc.) grew up in the shadow of the Pentagon, the son of an Air Force general; like many military brats of his generation, he dreamed of taking his place there one day, then found himself outside, protesting war and aggression. His book tells three interwoven stories. The first is the history of the building itself, constructed as a military annex during WWII; its groundbreaking took place, eerily enough, on Sept. 11, 1941, 60 years to the day and nearly the minute when American Airlines flight 77 would crash into its south wall. The second strand is the history of the military-industrial complex that the great building would inspire; by Carroll's careful account, the place seems to have legitimated a culture born in WWII that dismissed as standard operating procedure the targeting of civilian populations for military ends, the active intervention in the affairs of sovereign nations in order to maintain American suzerainty. Two hallmark moments in this amoral history, when the military became a fist of civilian policy that threatened sometimes to overwhelm the body, occurred on Sept. 11: one in 1973, when American-trained and -backed forces overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, the other in 1990, when George H.W. Bush declared the existence of the "new world order . . . [whose] purpose his son would attempt to fulfill, beginning exactly eleven years later." The third element of thisgrand narrative is Carroll's own story, a life marked by gruff nods from Curtis LeMay and the eventual distancing from a father whose ideals his son no longer shared. Altogether excellent, and essential for understanding the birth of America's empire.