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Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace | 
 enlarge | Author: Gore Vidal
Publisher: Nation Books
Category: Book
List Price: $10.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  89 reviews
Sales Rank: 31409
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5 x 0.4
ISBN: 156025405X
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.54
EAN: 9781560254058
ASIN: 156025405X
Publication Date: March 10, 2002
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Product Description
The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of "evil-doers?" "Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age." — Washington Post "Our greatest living man of letters."—Boston Globe "Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe."—Harold Bloom, The New York Review of Books
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| Customer Reviews: Read 84 more reviews...
 America's most astute political observer May 31, 2008
Gore Vidal is our most astute political observer and a brilliant writer. He's perhaps the 20th century's last great essayist. His insights about the rotten state of America's governance and the shredding of the Constitution are incisive. Definitely worth reading and thinking about.
Perpetual War April 9, 2008
In short, if you want to find out in very linear fashion, "How we got to be so hated," I highly recommend reading Mr. Gore's book. Very succinctly, eloquently, and at times BLUNTLY, Gore Vidal dissects the US government's foreign policies which are at the very-still-beating heart of "HOW."
This is a quick and enlightening read (some of the foreign conflicts and "operations" I knew of, many more I did not), and something of which every thinking American should be aware.
Books like this, make me ever-thankful that the First Amendment is still in effect.
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace - Well Named February 14, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I feel remiss that I didn't read this book when it came out six years ago, but I'm glad I finally read it. Mr. Vidal brings some emotional life into what is normally a lifeless policy-wonk issue and I can't stress how important it is to absorb his message - that we've completely given ourselves to a foreign dictated by military industrial interests. He emphasizes that our dealings around the world and at home are with people, and dehumanizing them serves no one's interests.
In a particularly long study, the author introduces us to Timothy McVeigh the Oklahoma Murrah Building bomber. I was in downtown Oklahoma that day and lost people to that tragedy, so it was hard for me to understand that Vidal wasn't condoning his actions or justifying them, but instead showing the reader that McVeigh had human motivations to do that horrible thing. Understanding, on their own terms, if you will. It shows that we can sit down and learn from people when it comes down to a one on one because humans can relate at some level with every other human. Randy Weaver, David Koresh, and even Osama bin Laden have motivations that can be understood and when those motivations are understood, it's possible to reach those people before it escalates into violence, murder, or tragedy.
Vidal takes us back to 1947 when Dean Acheson advocated scaring the hell out of the American people in order to justify a wartime military budget and in turn pumps corporate money from those interests into the political system, essentially buying elections. He tells the story of a foreign policy out of control and nonsensical where money trumps humanity every time. He tells the story of an empire driven by it's privatized industrial military without controlling it.
What is America "doing" in the name of its citizens, under the cover of democracy? Vidal publishes pages of aggressive military intervention around the globe and posits the question - have we made things better, or worse?
Finally what Vidal does is ring a clarion call to Americans to stand up and ask questions - hard, probing questions. Don't let the media run interference and don't let accountability be shirked. It used to be our government and it's time to take it back.
- CV Rick, February 2008
A fantastic read, highly recommended! February 11, 2008
Enlightening, scary, provocative, opinionated, funny - what more do you want from a book?
What a breath of fresh air he is!
Bottom Line: '...a MUST READ for patriotic Americans...' November 13, 2007
This is an outstanding book from an insightful and wise author. It should be required reading for all Americans. Recommend also: 'Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia' and 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire (The Real Story Series)' ...both by Gore Vidal. Also, see the documentary film 'Why We Fight'.
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