A bracing account of a war that lingers in our collective memory as both ambiguous and unjustly ignored
For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953 that has long been overshadowed by World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror. But as Bruce Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight that still haunts contemporary events. And in a very real way, although its true roots and repercussions continue to be either misunderstood, forgotten, or willfully ignored, it is the war that helped form modern America’s relationship to the world.
With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its start as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America’s post–World War II occupation of Korea, the untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and the powerful militaries organized and equipped by America and the Soviet Union in that divided land. He tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, and exposes as never before the appalling massacres andatrocities committed on all sides and the “oceans of napalm” dropped on the North by U.S. forces in a remarkably violent war that killed as many as four million Koreans, two thirds of whom were civilians.
In sobering detail, The Korean War chronicles a U.S. home front agitated by Joseph McCarthy, where absolutist conformity discouraged open inquiry and citizen dissent. Cumings incisively ties our current foreign policy back to Korea: an America with hundreds of permanent military bases abroad, a large standing army, and a permanent national security state at home, the ultimate result of a judicious and limited policy of containment evolving into an ongoing and seemingly endless global crusade.
Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential.
From the Hardcover edition.
5 有用 xqmxqm 2017-06-11 01:41:58
书名最好换成《震惊!美傀军韩战暴行大揭秘》,不然类似“美军汽油弹烧死的朝鲜女村民手握一封从Sears-Roebuck邮购女睡衣的挂号信”之类奇幻情节成堆出现在芝大历史系教授的著作中实在不太好解释。。
2 有用 Metamorphosis 2013-09-19 06:26:25
This book is not about Korea at all. It's about a bunch of complaints the author has towards the US stereotypes and ignorance =_______=
0 有用 Animals 2013-03-04 00:04:11
唉
0 有用 香槟塔 2022-02-24 08:10:51
写的是韩战但又不是韩战。从美国角度出发对美国军事工业从边缘到主流和美军战争行为的反思
0 有用 快乐橘子大福🍊 2023-12-31 18:33:23 日本
必修课学分真难拿系列
0 有用 快乐橘子大福🍊 2023-12-31 18:33:23 日本
必修课学分真难拿系列
0 有用 香槟塔 2022-02-24 08:10:51
写的是韩战但又不是韩战。从美国角度出发对美国军事工业从边缘到主流和美军战争行为的反思
0 有用 萌骨子小山芋 2020-01-17 00:25:38
不同于聚焦战场本身的叙事,或者是那些将这场战争包装为一种意识形态和价值反击另一种意识形态和价值的“传奇”作品,卡明斯的研究关怀战争爆发的现实根源,明确地和不遗其力地反思美国在内的战争责任。
0 有用 kc 2019-03-10 00:31:08
即使是写给美国人的,也还是值得看的。
5 有用 xqmxqm 2017-06-11 01:41:58
书名最好换成《震惊!美傀军韩战暴行大揭秘》,不然类似“美军汽油弹烧死的朝鲜女村民手握一封从Sears-Roebuck邮购女睡衣的挂号信”之类奇幻情节成堆出现在芝大历史系教授的著作中实在不太好解释。。