20th Century American History - Social Aspects - Post World War II, U.S. Politics & Government - 20th Century, Peace Studies, U.S. Politics & Government - 1988-1993

War and Peace

Name: War and Peace
Author: Howard Fast
ISBN: 9781563242076

by Howard Fast

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

In more than 100 essays, written over a three-year period for The New York Observer, Howard Fast looks with horror at the official violence inflicted on Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq and the unofficial violence that is taking place in the cities of the United States. In War and Peace, Fast summons us to face unflinchingly the wars and the social disintegration that degraded the Reagan and Bush years, with all the explanations and excuses stripped away. He dwells on the monumental folly of the Cold War and shows us repeatedly what we could have done with the billions spent on planes, bombs, and guns if we had spent them on the education and safety of our children, on housing, medical care, rebuilding the cities - and what we can still do in the future. As in Swift, Yahoos populate the essays of this book: the drug dealers; the local political hacks; the anti-Semites; the racists; the women-bashers; the arms traffickers: the whole unsavory cast. As in Mencken, boobs run loose in the White House and in the halls of Congress. From time to time, a Candide-like character named D'emas (Yiddish for "the truth") appears and asks embarrassing questions about the ways of our civilization, which his interlocutor is hard-pressed to answer. And yet after Howard Fast recounts the inanity and brutality of these years, he offers a humane vision of what America and the rest of the world could be. These essays hold a unique place in twentieth-century letters as a statement of unsurpassed passion on the theme: war and peace. Here is a great novelist's moral testament.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Booknews

In more than 100 essays written over a three-year period (1989-91) for The New York Observer, novelist (Citizen Tom Paine, Spartacus), humanist, and social critic Fast recounts the horror, degradation, inanity and violence of Reagan/Bush, and offers a counter-vision of what America and the world could be. Passionate and powerful. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)