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Why has America stopped winning wars? For nearly a century, up until the end of World War II in 1945, America enjoyed a Golden Age of decisive military triumphs. And then suddenly, we stopped winning wars. The decades since have been a Dark Age of failures and stalemates-in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan-exposing our inability to change course after battlefield setbacks. In this provocative book, award-winning scholar Dominic Tierney reveals how the United States has struggled to adapt to the new era of intractable guerrilla conflicts. As a result, most major American wars have turned into military fiascos. And when battlefield disaster strikes, Washington is unable to disengage from ...
Americans love war. We've never run from a fight. Our triumphs from the American Revolution to World War II define who we are as a nation and a people. Americans hate war. Our leaders rush us into conflicts without knowing the facts or understanding the consequences. Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan define who we are as a nation and a people. How We Fight explores the extraordinary doublemindedness with which Americans approach war, and reveals the opposing mindsets that have governed our responses throughout history: the "crusade" tradition-our grand quests to defend democratic values and overthrow tyrants; and the "quagmire" tradition-our resistance to the work of nation-buildi...
How do people decide which country came out ahead in a war or a crisis? Why, for instance, was the Mayaguez Incident in May 1975--where 41 U.S. soldiers were killed and dozens more wounded in a botched hostage rescue mission--perceived as a triumph and the 1992-94 U.S. humanitarian intervention in Somalia, which saved thousands of lives, viewed as a disaster? In Failing to Win, Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney dissect the psychological factors that predispose leaders, media, and the public to perceive outcomes as victories or defeats--often creating wide gaps between perceptions and reality. To make their case, Johnson and Tierney employ two frameworks: "Scorekeeping," which focuses on ac...
What was the relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt, architect of America’s rise to global power, and the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, which inspired passion and sacrifice, and shaped the road to world war? While many historians have portrayed the Spanish Civil War as one of Roosevelt’s most isolationist episodes, Dominic Tierney argues that it marked the president’s first attempt to challenge fascist aggression in Europe. Drawing on newly discovered archival documents, Tierney describes the evolution of Roosevelt’s thinking about the Spanish Civil War in relation to America’s broader geopolitical interests, as well as the fierce controversy in the United States over ...
Moral Victories is the first book-length treatment of the ethical dimensions of victory in war.
Examines military conflicts from the Civil War to the present to explore the opposing mindsets that drive Americans to support wars that defend democracy and overthrow tyrants while resisting the necessary work of nation building.
The willingness to believe in some kind of payback or karma remains nearly universal. Retribution awaits those who commit bad deeds; rewards await those who do good. Johnson explores how this belief has developed over time, and how it has shaped the course of human evolution.
The Handbook on the Political Economy of War highlights and explores important research questions and discusses the core elements of the political economy of war.
Opponents rarely go to war without thinking they can win--and clearly, one side must be wrong. This conundrum lies at the heart of the so-called "war puzzle": rational states should agree on their differences in power and thus not fight. But as Dominic Johnson argues in Overconfidence and War, states are no more rational than people, who are susceptible to exaggerated ideas of their own virtue, of their ability to control events, and of the future. By looking at this bias--called "positive illusions"--as it figures in evolutionary biology, psychology, and the politics of international conflict, this book offers compelling insights into why states wage war. Johnson traces the effects of posit...
How do people decide which country came out ahead in a war or a crisis? Why, for instance, was the 1975 Mayaguez incidence - where 41 US soldiers were killed in a botched hostage rescue mission - seen as a triumph, and the US intervention in Somalia, which saved thousands of lives, viewed as a disaster?