Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

How everything became war and the military became everything : tales from the Pentagon / Rosa Brooks.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2016Copyright date: ©2016Edition: First Simon & Schuster hardcover editionDescription: viii, 438 pages ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781476777863
  • 1476777861
  • 9781476777870
  • 147677787X
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Tremors -- The new American way of war -- Pirates! -- Wanna go to Gitmo? -- Lawyers with guns -- The full spectrum -- The secret war -- Future warfare -- What's an army for? -- What we've made it -- How we got here -- Putting war into a box -- Taming war -- An optimistic enterprise -- Making war -- Making the state -- Un-making sovereignty -- Making the military -- An age of uncertainty -- Counting the costs -- Car bombs and radioactive sushi -- War everywhere, law nowhere? -- Institutional costs -- Managing war's paradoxes.
Summary: The Pentagon's a strange place. Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions--but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. When Rosa Brooks gave her family a tour, her mother gaped at the glossy window displays: "So the heart of American military power is a shopping mall?" In a sense, yes: the U.S. military has become our one-stop-shopping solution to global problems. Today's military personnel analyze computer code, train Afghan judges, build Ebola isolation wards, eavesdrop on electronic communications, develop soap operas, and patrol the seas for pirates. Rosa Brooks traces this seismic shift in how America wages war from an unconventional perspective. She is a former top Pentagon official and the daughter of antiwar protesters; a human rights activist and the wife of an Army Special Forces officer. Her book is by turns a memoir, a work of journalism, and a scholarly exploration of history, anthropology, and law. But at its heart it is a rallying cry, for Brooks shows that when the war machine breaks out of its borders, we undermine the values and rules that keep our world from sliding toward chaos. And as we pile new tasks onto the military, we make it increasingly ill-prepared for the threats America faces. Brooks sounds an alarm, forcing us to see how the collapsing barriers between war and peace threaten both America and the world. And time is running out to make things right.--From dust jacket.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 355.0335 B873 Available 33111008451680
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The first serious book to examine what happens when the ancient boundary between war and peace is erased.

Once, war was a temporary state of affairs--a violent but brief interlude between times of peace. Today, America's wars are everywhere and forever: our enemies change constantly and rarely wear uniforms, and virtually anything can become a weapon. As war expands, so does the role of the US military. Today, military personnel don't just "kill people and break stuff." Instead, they analyze computer code, train Afghan judges, build Ebola isolation wards, eavesdrop on electronic communications, develop soap operas, and patrol for pirates. You name it, the military does it.

Rosa Brooks traces this seismic shift in how America wages war from an unconventional perspective--that of a former top Pentagon official who is the daughter of two anti-war protesters and a human rights activist married to an Army Green Beret. Her experiences lead her to an urgent warning: When the boundaries around war disappear, we risk destroying America's founding values and the laws and institutions we've built--and undermining the international rules and organizations that keep our world from sliding towards chaos. If Russia and China have recently grown bolder in their foreign adventures, it's no accident; US precedents have paved the way for the increasingly unconstrained use of military power by states around the globe. Meanwhile, we continue to pile new tasks onto the military, making it increasingly ill-prepared for the threats America will face in the years to come.

By turns a memoir, a work of journalism, a scholarly exploration into history, anthropology and law, and a rallying cry, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything transforms the familiar into the alien, showing us that the culture we inhabit is reshaping us in ways we may suspect, but don't really understand. It's the kind of book that will leave you moved, astonished, and profoundly disturbed, for the world around us is quietly changing beyond recognition--and time is running out to make things right.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-418) and index.

Tremors -- The new American way of war -- Pirates! -- Wanna go to Gitmo? -- Lawyers with guns -- The full spectrum -- The secret war -- Future warfare -- What's an army for? -- What we've made it -- How we got here -- Putting war into a box -- Taming war -- An optimistic enterprise -- Making war -- Making the state -- Un-making sovereignty -- Making the military -- An age of uncertainty -- Counting the costs -- Car bombs and radioactive sushi -- War everywhere, law nowhere? -- Institutional costs -- Managing war's paradoxes.

The Pentagon's a strange place. Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions--but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. When Rosa Brooks gave her family a tour, her mother gaped at the glossy window displays: "So the heart of American military power is a shopping mall?" In a sense, yes: the U.S. military has become our one-stop-shopping solution to global problems. Today's military personnel analyze computer code, train Afghan judges, build Ebola isolation wards, eavesdrop on electronic communications, develop soap operas, and patrol the seas for pirates. Rosa Brooks traces this seismic shift in how America wages war from an unconventional perspective. She is a former top Pentagon official and the daughter of antiwar protesters; a human rights activist and the wife of an Army Special Forces officer. Her book is by turns a memoir, a work of journalism, and a scholarly exploration of history, anthropology, and law. But at its heart it is a rallying cry, for Brooks shows that when the war machine breaks out of its borders, we undermine the values and rules that keep our world from sliding toward chaos. And as we pile new tasks onto the military, we make it increasingly ill-prepared for the threats America faces. Brooks sounds an alarm, forcing us to see how the collapsing barriers between war and peace threaten both America and the world. And time is running out to make things right.--From dust jacket.

Powered by Koha