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Wanting: Women Writing About Desire
by Margot Kahn and Kelly McMastersAn intimate and empowering anthology of essays that explore the changing face of female desire in whip-smart, sensuous prose, with pieces by Tara Conklin, Camille Dungy, Melissa Febos, Lisa Taddeo, and othersWhat is desire? And what are its rules? In this daring collection, award-winning and emerging female writers share their innermost longings, in turn dismantling both personal and political constructs of what desire is or can be.In the opening essay, Larissa Pham unearths the ache beneath all her wants: time. Rena Priest&’s desire for a pair of five-hundred-dollar cowboy boots spurs a reckoning with her childhood on the rez and the fraught history of her hometown. Other pieces in the collection turn cultural tropes around dating, sex, and romance on their heads—Angela Cardinale tries dating as a divorced mother of two in the California suburbs only to discover sweet solace in being alone; Keyanah B. Nurse finds power in polyamory; and when Joanna Rakoff spots a former lover at a bar, the heat between them unravels her family as she is pulled into his orbit—an undoing, she decides, that&’s worth everything.Including pieces by Tara Conklin, Torrey Peters, Camille Dungy, Melissa Febos, Lisa Taddeo, and so many others, these candid and insightful essays tackle the complicated knot of women&’s desire.Featuring essays by Elisa Albert, Kristen Arnett, Molly McCully Brown, Angela Cardinale, Tara Conklin, Sonia Maria David, Jennifer De Leon, Camille T. Dungy, Melissa Febos, Amber Flame, Amy Gall, Aracelis Girmay, Sonora Jha, Nicole Hardy, Laura Joyce-Hubbard, TaraShea Nesbit, Keyanah B. Nurse, Torrey Peters, Amanda Petrusich, Larissa Pham, Rena Priest, Joanna Rakoff, Karen Russell, Domenica Ruta, Susan Shapiro, Terese Svoboda, Lisa Taddeo, Ann Tashi Slater, Abigail Thomas, Merritt Tierce, Michelle Wildgen, Jane Wong, and Teresa Wong
War after Death: On Violence and Its Limits
by Steven MillerWar after Death considers forms of violence that regularly occur in actual wars but do not often factor into the stories we tell about war, which revolve invariably around killing and death. Recent history demonstrates that body counts are more necessary than ever, but the fact remains that war and death is only part of the story—an essential but ultimately subordinate part. Beyond killing, there is no war without attacks upon the built environment, ecosystems, personal property, artworks, archives, and intangible traditions.Destructive as it may be, such violence is difficult to classify because it does not pose a grave threat to human lives. Nonetheless, the book argues that destruction of the nonhuman or nonliving is a constitutive dimension of all violence—especially forms of extreme violence against the living such as torture and rape; and it examines how the language and practice of war are transformed when this dimension is taken into account.Finally, War after Death offers a rethinking of psychoanalytic approaches to war and the theory of the death drive that underlies them.
The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men
by Christina Hoff SommersAn updated and revised edition of the controversial classic—now more relevant than ever—argues that boys are the ones languishing socially and academically, resulting in staggering social and economic costs.Girls and women were once second-class citizens in the nation&’s schools. Americans responded with concerted efforts to give girls and women the attention and assistance that was long overdue. Now, after two major waves of feminism and decades of policy reform, women have made massive strides in education. Today they outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic, and vocational well-being. Christina Hoff Sommers contends that it&’s time to take a hard look at present-day realities and recognize that boys need help. Called &“provocative and controversial...impassioned and articulate&” (The Christian Science Monitor), this edition of The War Against Boys offers a new preface and six radically revised chapters, plus updates on the current status of boys throughout the book. Sommers argues that the problem of male underachievement is persistent and worsening. Among the new topics Sommers tackles: how the war against boys is harming our economic future, and how boy-averse trends such as the decline of recess and zero-tolerance disciplinary policies have turned our schools into hostile environments for boys. As our schools become more feelings-centered, risk-averse, competition-free, and sedentary, they move further and further from the characteristic needs of boys. She offers realistic, achievable solutions to these problems that include boy-friendly pedagogy, character and vocational education, and the choice of single-sex classrooms. The War Against Boys is an incisive, rigorous, and heartfelt argument in favor of recognizing and confronting a new reality: boys are languishing in education and the price of continued neglect is economically and socially prohibitive.
War and Children
by Anna Freud Dorothy T. BurlinghamThis book looks at the record of children in modern war told honestly and completely, by two of the world's outstanding child psychologists, Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham. The work focuses on how war affects psychological development in children; the need for personal attachment, for emotional stability, and for permanency of educational influence.
War and Moral Injury: A Reader
by Robert Emmet Meagher Douglas A. PryerMoral Injury has been called the "signature wound" of today's wars. It is also as old as the human record of war, as evidenced in the ancient war epics of Greece, India, and the Middle East. But what exactly is Moral Injury? What are its causes and consequences? What can we do to prevent or limit its occurrence among those we send to war? And, above all, what can we do to help heal afflicted warriors? This landmark volume provides an invaluable resource for those looking for answers to these questions. Gathered here are some of the most far-ranging, authoritative, and accessible writings to date on the topic of Moral Injury. Contributors come from the fields of psychology, theology, philosophy, psychiatry, law, journalism, neuropsychiatry, classics, poetry, and, of course, the profession of arms. Their voices find common cause in informing the growing, international conversation on war and war's deepest and most enduring invisible wound. Few may want to have this myth-challenging, truth-telling conversation, but it is one we must have if we truly wish to help those we send to fight our wars.
War and Reconciliation: Reason and Emotion in Conflict Resolution
by William J. Long Peter BreckeThis book is the first systematic examination of the impact of reconciliation on restoring and maintaining peace following civil and international conflicts. Through eleven comparative case studies of civil war and eight of international conflict, it constructs a surprising explanation for when and why reconciliation restores social order. The civil war cases reveal that successful reconciliation is associated with a process of national forgiveness, not merely negotiated settlement. All successful cases followed a four-step pattern of public truth telling, justice short of revenge, redefinition of the identities of former belligerents, and a call for a new relationship. The book argues that success is not solely the result of rational choice decision making. It proposes a hypothesis, grounded in evolutionary psychology, that to restore social order we use emotional/cognitive techniques that have evolved to ensure human survival. On the international level, however, successful reconciliation was not a part of a forgiveness process. Reconciliation was successful in bringing about sustained peace when it was associated with a signaling process -- an exchange of costly, novel, voluntary, and irrevocable concessions in a negotiated bargain. This result is consistent with realist notions of the limits of international society and illustrates the context in which a rational choice model is appropriate. The book's approach, integrating emotion with reasoning and linking political science to scientific research in other disciplines, particularly biology and neuroscience, has broad implications for social science theory.
War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Post-tramatic Stress Disorder
by Edward Tick<p>War and PTSD are on the public's mind as news stories regularly describe insurgency attacks in Iraq and paint grim portraits of the lives of returning soldiers afflicted with PTSD. These vets have recurrent nightmares and problems with intimacy, can't sustain jobs or relationships, and won't leave home, imagining "the enemy" is everywhere. <p>Dr. Edward Tick has spent decades developing healing techniques so effective that clinicians, clergy, spiritual leaders, and veterans' organizations all over the country are studying them. This book, presented here in an audio version, shows that healing depends on our understanding of PTSD not as a mere stress disorder, but as a disorder of identity itself. In the terror of war, the very soul can flee, sometimes for life. Tick's methods draw on compelling case studies and ancient warrior traditions worldwide to restore the soul so that the veteran can truly come home to community, family, and self.</p>
War and the Soul
by Edward TickIn 2010 the Department of Veterans Affairs cited 171,423 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans diagnosed with PTSD, out of 593,634 total patients treated. That's almost 30 percent; other statistics show 35 percent. Such vets typically can't hold jobs. They are incapable of intimacy, creative work, and self-realization. Some can't leave the house because they are afraid they will kill or be killed.The key to healing, says psychotherapist Ed Tick, is in how we understand PTSD. In war's overwhelming violence, the soul-the true self-flees and can become lost for life. He redefines PTSD as a true identity disorder, with radical implications for therapy. First, Tick establishes the traditional context of war in mythology and religion. Then he describes in depth PTSD in terms of identity issues. Finally, drawing on world spiritual traditions, he presents ways to nurture a positive identity based in compassion and forgiveness.War and the Soul will change the way we think about war, for veterans and for all those who love and want to help them. It shows how to make the wounded soul whole again. When this work is achieved, PTSD vanishes and the veteran can truly return home.
The War Between Mentalism and Behaviorism: On the Accessibility of Mental Processes (Scientific Psychology Series)
by William R. UttalThis book considers one of the most fundamental, but only infrequently considered, issues in psychology--Are mental processes accessible by means of verbal reports and/or experimental assays? It is argues that this is the main characteristic distinguishing between behaviorism and mentalistic cognitivism. The answer posed by the author is that, with few exceptions and for the most fundamental reasons, mental processes are not accessible and that any psychology, such as contemporary cognitivism, based on a putative analysis of mind into its mental components must be fallacious. Classic and modern arguments against both mentalism and behaviorism are reviewed. In general, it is concluded that most antibehaviorist arguments are based on second order humanistic considerations rather than those underlying the usual scientific standards. Behaviorism represents the best that can be done in a situation of fundamental immeasurability and uncertainty. A modern version is offered in the final chapter of this book.
War, Community, and Social Change: Collective Experiences in the Former Yugoslavia
by Dinka Corkalo Biruski Guy Elcheroth Dario SpiniCollective experiences in the former Yugoslavia documents and analyses how social representations and practices are shaped by collective violence in a context of ethnic discourse. What are the effects of violence and what are the effects of collectively experienced victimisation on societal norms, attitudes and collective beliefs? This volume stresses that mass violence has a de- and re-structuring role for manifold psychosocial processes. A combined psychosocial approach draws attention to how most people in the former Yugoslavia had to endure and cope with war and dramatic societal changes and how they resisted and overcame ethnic rivalry, violence and segregation. It is a departure from the mindset that depict most people in the former Yugoslavia as either blind followers of ethnic war entrepreneurs or as intrinsically motivated for violence by deep-rooted intra-ethnic loyalties and inter-ethnic animosities.
The War Complex: World War II in Our Time
by Marianna TorgovnickThe recent dedication of the World War II memorial and the sixtieth anniversary commemoration of D-Day remind us of the hold that World War II still has over America's sense of itself. But the selective process of memory has radically shaped our picture of the conflict. Why else, for instance, was a 1995 Smithsonian exhibition on Hiroshima that was to include photographs of the first atomic bomb victims, along with their testimonials, considered so controversial? And why do we so readily remember the civilian bombings of Britain but not those of Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo? Marianna Torgovnick argues that we have lived, since the end of World War II, under the power of a war complex--a set of repressed ideas and impulses that stems from our unresolved attitudes toward the technological acceleration of mass death. This complex has led to gaps and hesitations in public discourse about atrocities committed during the war itself. And it remains an enduring wartime consciousness, one most recently animated on September 11, 2001. Showing how different events from World War II became prominent in American cultural memory while others go forgotten or remain hidden in plain sight, "The War Complex" moves deftly from war films and historical works to television specials and popular magazines to define the image and influence of World War II in our time. Torgovnick also explores the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the emotional legacy of the Holocaust, and the treatment of World War II's missing history by writers such as W. G. Sebald to reveal the unease we feel at our dependence on those who hold the power of total war. Thinking anew, then, about how we account for war to each other andourselves, Torgovnick ultimately, and movingly, shows how these anxieties and fears have prepared us to think about 9/11 and our current war in Iraq.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
by Jamil Zaki'In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever' - Angela Duckworth, author of Grit 'Scientific, gripping, groundbreaking and hopeful. The War for Kindness is the message for our times' - Carol Dweck, author of Mindset Empathy has been on people's mind a lot lately. Philosophers, evolutionary scientists and indeed former President Obama agree that an increase in empathy could advance us beyond the hatred, violence and polarization in which the world seems caught. Others disagree, arguing it is easiest to empathize with people who look, talk or think like us. As a result, empathy can inspire nepotism, racism and worse. Having studied the neuroscience and psychology of empathy for over a decade, Jamil Zaki thinks both sides of this debate have a point. Empathy is sometimes an engine for moral progress, and other times for moral failure. But Zaki also thinks that both sides are wrong about how empathy works. Both scientists and non-scientists commonly argue that empathy is something that happens to you, sort of like an emotional knee-jerk reflex. Second, they believe it happens more to some people than others. This lines people up along a spectrum, with deep empaths on one end and psychopaths on the other. What's more, wherever we are on that spectrum, we're stuck there. In The War for Kindness, Zaki lays out a very different view of how empathy works, one that breaks these two assumptions. Empathy is not a reflex; it's a choice. We choose empathy (or apathy) constantly: when we read a tragic novel, or cross the street to avoid a homeless person, or ask a distraught friend what's the matter. This view has crucial consequences: if empathy is less a trait (like height), and more a skill (like being good at word games), then we can improve at it. By choosing it more often, we can flex our capabilities and grow more empathic over time. We can also "tune" empathy, ramping it up in situations where it will help and turning it down when it might backfire. Zaki takes us from the world of doctors who train medical students to empathise better to social workers who help each other survive empathising too much. From police trainers who help cadets avoid becoming violent cops to political advocates who ask white Americans to literally walk a (dusty) mile in Mexican immigrants' shoes. This book will give you a deepened understanding of how empathy works, how to control it and how to become the type of empathiser you want to be.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
by Jamil Zaki'In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever' - Angela Duckworth, author of Grit'Scientific, gripping, groundbreaking and hopeful. The War for Kindness is the message for our times' - Carol Dweck, author of MindsetEmpathy has been on people's mind a lot lately. Philosophers, evolutionary scientists and indeed former President Obama agree that an increase in empathy could advance us beyond the hatred, violence and polarization in which the world seems caught. Others disagree, arguing it is easiest to empathize with people who look, talk or think like us. As a result, empathy can inspire nepotism, racism and worse. Having studied the neuroscience and psychology of empathy for over a decade, Jamil Zaki thinks both sides of this debate have a point. Empathy is sometimes an engine for moral progress, and other times for moral failure. But Zaki also thinks that both sides are wrong about how empathy works. Both scientists and non-scientists commonly argue that empathy is something that happens to you, sort of like an emotional knee-jerk reflex. Second, they believe it happens more to some people than others. This lines people up along a spectrum, with deep empaths on one end and psychopaths on the other. What's more, wherever we are on that spectrum, we're stuck there. In The War for Kindness, Zaki lays out a very different view of how empathy works, one that breaks these two assumptions. Empathy is not a reflex; it's a choice. We choose empathy (or apathy) constantly: when we read a tragic novel, or cross the street to avoid a homeless person, or ask a distraught friend what's the matter. This view has crucial consequences: if empathy is less a trait (like height), and more a skill (like being good at word games), then we can improve at it. By choosing it more often, we can flex our capabilities and grow more empathic over time. We can also "tune" empathy, ramping it up in situations where it will help and turning it down when it might backfire. Zaki takes us from the world of doctors who train medical students to empathise better to social workers who help each other survive empathising too much. From police trainers who help cadets avoid becoming violent cops to political advocates who ask white Americans to literally walk a (dusty) mile in Mexican immigrants' shoes. This book will give you a deepened understanding of how empathy works, how to control it and how to become the type of empathiser you want to be.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
by Jamil Zaki&“In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever.&”—Angela Duckworth, author of GritDon&’t miss Jamil Zaki&’s TED Talk, &“We&’re experiencing an empathy shortage, but we can fix it together,&” online now. Empathy is in short supply. We struggle to understand people who aren&’t like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an &“empathy deficit.&” Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse. It doesn&’t have to be this way. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait—something we&’re born with or not—but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. We meet a former neo-Nazi who is now helping to extract people from hate groups, ex-prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, Washington police officers changing their culture to decrease violence among their ranks, and NICU nurses fine-tuning their empathy so that they don&’t succumb to burnout. Written with clarity and passion, The War for Kindness is an inspiring call to action. The future may depend on whether we accept the challenge.Praise for The War for Kindness&“A wide-ranging practical guide to making the world better.&”—NPR&“Relating anecdotes and test cases from his fellow researchers, news events and the imaginary world of literature and entertainment, Zaki makes a vital case for &‘fighting for kindness.&’ . . . If he&’s right—and after reading The War for Kindness, you&’ll probably think so—Zaki&’s work is right on time.&” —San Francisco Chronicle&“In this landmark book, Jamil Zaki gives us a revolutionary perspective on empathy: Empathy can be developed, and, when it is, people, relationships, organizations, and cultures are changed.&”—Carol Dweck, author of Mindset
The War in Their Minds: German Soldiers and Their Violent Pasts in West Germany
by Philip Schmitz Svenja GoltermannHistorians are increasingly looking at the sacrifices Germans had to make during World War II. In this context, Svenja Goltermann has taken up a particularly delicate topic, German soldiers' experience of violence during the war, and repercussions of this experience after their return home. Part I of her book explores the ways in which veterans' experiences of wartime violence reshaped everyday family life, involving family members in complex ways. Part II offers an extensive analysis of the psychiatric response to this new category of patient, and in particular the reluctance of psychiatrists to recognize the psychic afflictions of former POWs as constituting the grounds for long-term disability. Part III analyzes the cultural representations of veterans' psychic suffering, encompassing the daily press, popular films, novels, and theater. Originally published in German as Die Gesellschaft der Uberlebenden, The War in Their Minds examines hitherto unused source material--psychiatric medical files of soldiers--to make clear how difficult it was for the soldiers and their families to readjust to normal, everyday life. Goltermann allows these testimonies of violence, guilt, justification, and helplessness speak for themselves and sensitively explores how the pension claims of returning soldiers were to compete with the claims of the Holocaust victims to compensation.
The War Inside
by Michal ShapiraThe War Inside is a groundbreaking history of the contribution of British psychoanalysis to the making of social democracy, childhood, and the family during World War II and the postwar reconstruction. Psychoanalysts informed understandings not only of individuals, but also of broader political questions. By asserting a link between a real 'war outside' and an emotional 'war inside', psychoanalysts contributed to an increased state responsibility for citizens' mental health. They made understanding children and the mother-child relationship key to the successful creation of a democratic citizenry. Using rich archival sources, the book revises the common view of psychoanalysis as an elite discipline by taking it out of the clinic and into the war nursery, the juvenile court, the state welfare committee, and the children's hospital. It traces the work of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Freud in response to total war and explores its broad postwar effects on British society.
War Memoirs 1917-1919: Second Edition
by Wilfred R. BionBion's War Memoirs is perhaps the most exceptional piece of autobiography yet written by a psychoanalyst. The first section of the book is documentary, consisting of the entire text of the diaries which the author wrote as a young man to record his experiences on the Western Front in 1917-1919, and this volume also includes the photographs and diagrams with which he illustrated his recollections. The diaries are followed by two later essays, in which he reflects upon his wartime experiences. The author has long been renowned as one of the great psychoanalysts, his career spanning much of the twentieth century and making him one of the most influential names in the field. The author's war diary, which he kept with him during combat, covered his years fighting in France during the First World War. He was just twenty years old when he began writing it. War Memoirs constitutes the final part of the author's autobiography.
The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present
by Paul SeabrightHow our stone-age brains made modern society, and why it matters for relationships between men and womenAs countless love songs, movies, and self-help books attest, men and women have long sought different things. The result? Seemingly inevitable conflict. Yet we belong to the most cooperative species on the planet. Isn't there a way we can use this capacity to achieve greater harmony and equality between the sexes? In The War of the Sexes, Paul Seabright argues that there is—but first we must understand how the tension between conflict and cooperation developed in our remote evolutionary past, how it shaped the modern world, and how it still holds us back, both at home and at work.Drawing on biology, sociology, anthropology, and economics, Seabright shows that conflict between the sexes is, paradoxically, the product of cooperation. The evolutionary niche—the long dependent childhood—carved out by our ancestors requires the highest level of cooperative talent. But it also gives couples more to fight about. Men and women became experts at influencing one another to achieve their cooperative ends, but also became trapped in strategies of manipulation and deception in pursuit of sex and partnership. In early societies, economic conditions moved the balance of power in favor of men, as they cornered scarce resources for use in the sexual bargain. Today, conditions have changed beyond recognition, yet inequalities between men and women persist, as the brains, talents, and preferences we inherited from our ancestors struggle to deal with the unpredictable forces unleashed by the modern information economy.Men and women today have an unprecedented opportunity to achieve equal power and respect. But we need to understand the mixed inheritance of conflict and cooperation left to us by our primate ancestors if we are finally to escape their legacy.
War on Sacred Grounds
by Ron E. HassnerSacred sites offer believers the possibility of communing with the divine and achieving deeper insight into their faith. Yet their spiritual and cultural importance can lead to competition as religious groups seek to exclude rivals from practicing potentially sacrilegious rituals in the hallowed space and wish to assert their own claims. Holy places thus create the potential for military, theological, or political clashes, not only between competing religious groups but also between religious groups and secular actors. In War on Sacred Grounds, Ron E. Hassner investigates the causes and properties of conflicts over sites that are both venerated and contested; he also proposes potential means for managing these disputes. Hassner illustrates a complex and poorly understood political dilemma with accounts of the failures to reach settlement at Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif, leading to the clashes of 2000, and the competing claims of Hindus and Muslims at Ayodhya, which resulted in the destruction of the mosque there in 1992. He also addresses more successful compromises in Jerusalem in 1967 and Mecca in 1979. Sacred sites, he contends, are particularly prone to conflict because they provide valuable resources for both religious and political actors yet cannot be divided. The management of conflicts over sacred sites requires cooperation, Hassner suggests, between political leaders interested in promoting conflict resolution and religious leaders who can shape the meaning and value that sacred places hold for believers. Because a reconfiguration of sacred space requires a confluence of political will, religious authority, and a window of opportunity, it is relatively rare. Drawing on the study of religion and the study of politics in equal measure, Hassner's account offers insight into the often-violent dynamics that come into play at the places where religion and politics collide.
War, Peace and International Security
by Jan EichlerThis book examines and explains the dialectic of war and peace between the outbreak of WWI and the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. The theoretical inspiration is built upon Galtung's concept of negative and positive peace, Aron#65533;s distinction between strategy and diplomacy, and Carr#65533;s theory of periodization. Here, the author compares globalization with the interwar period and examines how the first decade#65533;s positive peace, diplomacy, and big hopes were replaced by negative peace, and explains the growing role of military strategy which culminated after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the following military incidents between NATO and Russia. This volume will be of interest to teachers, students, and researchers in the fields of modern history, international security and peace studies.
War Trauma and Its Wake: Expanding the Circle of Healing (Psychosocial Stress Series)
by Raymond Monsour Scurfield Katherine Theresa PlatoniDecades after Charles Figley’s landmark Trauma and Its Wake was published, our understanding of trauma has grown and deepened, but we still face considerable challenges when treating trauma survivors. This is especially the case for professionals who work with veterans and active-duty military personnel. War Trauma and Its Wake, then, is a vital book. The editors—one a Vietnam veteran who wrote the overview chapter on treatment for Trauma and Its Wake, the other an Army Reserve psychologist with four deployments—have produced a book that addresses both the specific needs of particular warrior communities as well as wider issues such as battlemind, guilt, suicide, and much, much more. The editors’ and contributors’ deep understanding of the issues that warriors face makes War Trauma and Its Wake a crucial book for understanding the military experience, and the lessons contained in its pages are essential for anyone committed to healing war trauma.
War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare #50)
by Ángel AlcaldeThis book explores, from a transnational viewpoint, the historical relationship between war veterans and fascism in interwar Europe. Until now, historians have been roughly divided between those who assume that 'brutalization' (George L. Mosse) led veterans to join fascist movements and those who stress that most ex-soldiers of the Great War became committed pacifists and internationalists. Transcending the debates of the brutalization thesis and drawing upon a wide range of archival and published sources, this work focuses on the interrelated processes of transnationalization and the fascist permeation of veterans' politics in interwar Europe to offer a wider perspective on the history of both fascism and veterans' movements. A combination of mythical constructs, transfers, political communication, encounters and networks within a transnational space explain the relationship between veterans and fascism. Thus, this book offers new insights into the essential ties between fascism and war, and contributes to the theorization of transnational fascism. Offers a Europe-wide transnational perspective on the complex phenomenon of fascism Analyzes the cultural, sociological and political origins of fascism and its proliferations across Europe Transcends the traditional paradigm of the 'brutalization' thesis and challenges conventional views of war veterans' identities and history
The War Within: Preventing Suicide in the U. S. Military
by Rachel M. Burns Rajeev Ramchand Joie Acosta Lisa H. Jaycox Christopher G. PerninThe increase in suicides among military personnel has raised concern. This book reviews the current evidence on suicide epidemiology in the military, identifies state-of-the-art suicide-prevention programs, describes and catalogs suicide-prevention activities in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and across each service, and recommends ways to ensure that the activities in DoD and across each service reflect state-of-the-art prevention science.
Warbody: A Marine Sniper and the Hidden Violence of Modern Warfare
by Joshua Howe Alexander LemonsA friendship between an environmental historian and a chronically ill US Marine yields a powerful exploration into the toxic effects of war on the human body. Alexander Lemons is a Marine Corps scout sniper who, after serving multiple tours during the Iraq War, returned home seriously and mysteriously ill. Joshua Howe is an environmental historian who met Lemons as a student in one of his classes. Together they have crafted a vital book that challenges us to think beyond warfare’s acute violence of bullets and bombs to the “slow violence” of toxic exposure and lasting trauma. In alternating chapters, Lemons vividly describes his time in Fallujah and elsewhere during the worst of the Iraq War, his descent into a decade-long battle with mysterious and severe sickness, and his return to health; Howe explains, with clarity and scientific insight, the many toxicities to which Lemons was exposed and their potential consequences. Together they cover the whirlwind of toxic exposures military personnel face from the things they touch and breathe in all the time, including lead from bullets, jet fuel, fire retardants, pesticides, mercury, dust, and the cocktail of toxicants emitted by the open-air “burn pits” used in military settings to burn waste products like paint, human waste, metal cans, oil, and plastics. They also consider PTSD and traumatic brain injury, which are endemic among the military and cause and exacerbate all kinds of physical and mental health problems. Finally, they explore how both mainstream and alternative medicine struggle to understand, accommodate, and address the vast array of health problems among military veterans. Warbody challenges us to rethink the violence we associate with war and the way we help veterans recover. It is a powerful book with an urgent message for the nearly twenty million Americans who are active military or veterans, as well as for their families, their loved ones, and all of us who depend on their service.
Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health
by William GlasserHow psychopharmacology has usurped the role of psychotherapy in our society, to the great detriment of the patients involved. William Glasser describes in Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health the sea change that has taken place in the treatment of mental health in the last few years. Millions of patients are now routinely being given prescriptions for a wide range of drugs including Ritalin, Prosac, Zoloft and related drugs which can be harmful to the brain. A previous generation of patients would have had a course of psychotherapy without brain-damaging chemicals. Glasser explains the wide implications of this radical change in treatment and what can be done to counter it.