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Due to its ability to freeze a moment in time, the photo is a uniquely powerful device for ordering and understanding the world. But when an image depicts complex, ambiguous, or controversial events--terrorist attacks, wars, political assassinations--its ability to influence perception can prove deeply unsettling. Are we really seeing the world "as it is" or is the image a fabrication or projection? How do a photo's content and form shape a viewer's impressions? What do such images contribute to historical memory? About to Die focuses on one emotionally charged category of news photograph--depictions of individuals who are facing imminent death--as a prism for addressing such vital questions. Tracking events as wide-ranging as the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, and 9/11, Barbie Zelizer demonstrates that modes of journalistic depiction and the power of the image are immense cultural forces that are still far from understood. Through a survey of a century of photojournalism, including close analysis of over sixty photos, About to Die provides a framework and vocabulary for understanding the news imagery that so profoundly shapes our view of the world.
The 1960s and early 70s saw the evolution of Frontier Myths even as scholars were renouncing the interpretive value of myths themselves. Works like Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War exemplified that rejection using his experiences during the Vietnam War to illustrate the problematic consequences of simple mythic idealism. Simultaneously, Americans were playing with expanded and revised versions of familiar Frontier Myths, though in a contemporary context, through NASA’s lunar missions, Star Trek, and Gerard K. O’Neill’s High Frontier. This book examines the reasons behind the exclusion of Frontier Myths to the periphery of scholarly discourse, and endeavors to build a new model for understanding their enduring significance. This model connects NASA’s failed attempts to recycle earlier myths, wholesale, to Star Trek’s revision of those myths and rejection of the idea of a frontier paradise, to O’Neill’s desire to realize such a paradise in Earth’s orbit. This new synthesis defies the negative connotations of Frontier Myths during the 1960s and 70s and attempts to resuscitate them for relevance in the modern academic context.
Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crises—radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War—and the international response. Beginning in 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, scattering a massive amount of radioactivity across the globe. The scale of contamination was so vast, and radioactive decay so slow, that the cumulative effect on humans and the environment is still difficult to fully comprehend. The international debate over nuclear fallout turned global radioactive contamination into an environmental issue, eventually leading the nu...
Cover -- The American War in Vietnam -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Commemoration Story -- 1. The Noble Cause Principle and the Actual History -- 2. French Colonialism and the Origins of the American War in Vietnam -- 3. The Diem Regime and President John F. Kennedy -- 4. President Johnson and Escalation of the War -- 5. President Nixon, "Vietnamization," and the End of the War -- 6. Some Lessons and Myths of the American War in Vietnam -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Roberto E. Barrios presents an ethnographic study of the aftermaths of four natural disasters: southern Honduras after Hurricane Mitch; New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina; Chiapas, Mexico, after the Grijalva River landslide; and southern Illinois following the Mississippi River flood. Focusing on the role of affect, Barrios examines the ways in which people who live through disasters use emotions as a means of assessing the relevance of governmentally sanctioned recovery plans, judging the effectiveness of such programs, and reflecting on the risk of living in areas that have been deemed prone to disaster. Emotions such as terror, disgust, or sentimental attachment to place all shape th...
A pathbreaking study of the psychic afflictions of German soldiers returning from the Second World War
This is a collection of essays on the life and writing of W.D. Ehrhart, poet, essayist, memoirist and teacher. The twenty contributors--scholars, publishers, poets--are from the U.S., France, Britain, the Netherlands, Austria, India and Japan. Some are Vietnam or Iraq war veterans. The collection overall studies various aspects of Ehrhart's writing, as well as his direct influence on the lives of people, both as a writer and as a teacher. The volume concludes with a selection of Ehrhart poems chosen by the contributors because they embody some quality discussed in the essays. The book includes a selected bibliography of Bill Ehrhart's published writings.
Focusing on a key twenty year period, this study explores Britain's role in efforts to bring about a nuclear test ban treaty between 1954 and 1973. Taking a broadly chronological approach, it examines the nature of defence planning, Anglo-American relationships, the efficacy of British diplomacy and UK contributions to arms control and disarmament. The appraisal of the relationship between the requirements and developments of the UK nuclear weapons programme against the countervailing international and domestic pressures for a test ban treaty will be of interest to anyone studying post-war British defence and foreign policy, history of science, arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation and international relations, or who is looking for background information on current events involving nuclear proliferation and disarmament.
Into New Territory charts how the concept of US imperialism became prevalent in the writing of American diplomatic history, and how empire evolved into an effective analytical framework for the study of US foreign policy.