Un American

"Eloquent, devastating . . . packed with gimlet-eyed analysis - cultural, economic, historical - of how American life came to look the way it does . . . Edstrom's keen observational powers encompass both the physical world and social nuance." -Los Angeles Review of Books A manifesto about America's unchallenged war machine, from an Afghanistan veteran and new kind of military hero. Before engaging in war, Erik Edstrom asks us to imagine three, rarely imagined scenarios: First, imagine your own death. Second, imagine war from “the other side.” Third: Imagine what might have been if the war had never been fought. Pursuing these realities through his own combat experience, Erik reaches the unavoidable conclusion about America at war. But that realization came too late-the damage had been done. Erik Edstrom grew up in suburban Massachusetts with an idealistic desire to make an impact, ultimately leading him to the gates of West Point. Five years later, he was deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry lieutenant. Throughout his military career, he confronted atrocities, buried his friends, wrestled with depression, and struggled with an understanding that the war he fought in, and the youth he traded to prepare for it, was in contribution to a bitter truth: The War on Terror is not just a tragedy, but a crime. The deeper tragedy is that our country lacks the courage and conviction to say so. Un-American is a hybrid of social commentary and memoir that exposes how blind support for war exacerbates the problems it's intended to resolve, devastates the people allegedly being helped, and diverts assets from far larger threats like climate change. Un-American is a revolutionary act, offering a blueprint for redressing America's relationship with patriotism, the military, and military spending.

Dancing between lyric and narrative, Hafizah Geter's debut collection moves readers through the fraught internal and external landscapes—linguistic, cultural, racial, familial—of those whose lives are shaped and transformed by immigration. The Nigerian-born daughter of a Nigerian-Muslim woman and a Black man born into a Southern Baptist family in the Jim Crow South and George Wallace's Alabama, Geter charts the history of a Black family of mixed citizenships through poems complicated by migration, language, racism, queerness, loss, belief and lapsed faith, and the heartbreak of trying to feel at home in a country that does not recognize you. Amidst considerations of family and country, Geter weaves in testimonies for Black victims of police brutality, songs of lament that hone each tragedy and like Antigone, demand we bear intimate witness to the ethical failings of the state. Through her mother's death and her father's illnesses, we witness Geter lace the natural world into the discourse of grief, human interactions, and socio-political discord in a collection rich with unflinching intimacy that, turning outward to face the country, examines how all of this is, like the speaker herself, stretched between the context of two nations. This collection that thrums with authenticity and heart.

This book studies the Red Scare of the 1920s through the lens of gender. The author describes the methods antifeminists used to subdue feminism and otehr movements they viewed as radical. The book also considers the seeming contradictions of outspoken antifeminists who broke with traditional gender norms to assume forceful and public roles in their efforts to denounce feminism.

A Scathing Indictment of Donald Trump on the Eve of the 2020 Election Un-American? President Donald J. Trump has been called many names, but how can this term apply to a candidate and president whose slogan is “make America great again?” How can such a term apply to the “America First” president? In this book, John J. Pitney Jr., one of America’s most incisive conservative commentators exposes a core irony of Trump’s presidency: that a man who is quick to question the patriotism of his critics is himself deeply unpatriotic. Pitney argues that real Americanism is about ideas and ideals: truth, equality, the rule of law, patriotic service, and the hope that America can serve as an example to the rest of the world. By words and actions, Trump has disparaged all of these things. Through an examination of his record, this book tells how Trump subverts genuine American greatness.

The concept of “un-Americanism,” so vital to the HUAC crusade of the 1940s and 1950s, was resoundingly revived in the emotional rhetoric that followed the September 11th terrorist attacks. Today’s political and cultural climate makes it more crucial than ever to come to terms with the consequences of this earlier period of repression and with the contested claims of Americanism that it generated. “Un-American” Hollywood reopens the intense critical debate on the blacklist era and on the aesthetic and political work of the Hollywood Left. In a series of fresh case studies focusing on contexts of production and reception, the contributors offer exciting and original perspectives on the role of progressive politics within a capitalist media industry. Original essays scrutinize the work of individual practitioners, such as Robert Rossen, Joseph Losey, Jules Dassin, and Edward Dmytryk, and examine key films, including The Robe, Christ in Concrete, The House I Live In, The Lawless, The Naked City, The Prowler, Body and Soul, and FTA.

In 1942 more than 109,000 Japanese Americans, including 70,000 U.S. citizens, were picked up and sent to incarceration centers, most for the duration of the war. It was the shame of America-- and it was documented on film. Cahan and Williams provide a visual history which includes interviews with many of the people reflecting on their experiences.

A history of the committee from its origins in the Palmer Raids of the 1920's, through the rise of Communist and Fascist groups in the 1930's, culminating in the McCarthyism of the 1950's, and continuing into the investigations of civil rights and peace organizations of the 1960's. Includes photos of major figures.

Un-American Acts focuses on identity and invisibility of African American and other underrepresented youth in the U.S. society and schooling. Presented are a series of chapters rooted in critical theory, aesthetics, and moral imagination that are intended to serve as prompts for crucial conversations and for engaging in critical reflective pedagogy in educational leadership and educational studies. Chapters center on events that have transpired in Ferguson, Staten Island, South Carolina, and elsewhere in the U.S. as well as on other relevant concerns that have had a profound impact on perceptions of race and identity in our nation’s educational systems.