  | Book Details Title: The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory |
Book DescriptionReview Advance Praise for The Age of Illusions“This engrossing recounting of the irresponsibility of America’s ruling class―aided and abetted by a citizenry grown complacent―clarifies the absurdities of the ascent of Trump. Like a Greek tragedian of old, Bacevich insistently discloses the discomfiting truth, showing how America’s self-congratulatory past has led to our wrenching present. Instead of illusions, he offers hope for a future free of self-deception, and points the way toward a newly responsible American civic life.”―Patrick J. Deneen, author of Why Liberalism Failed“In The Age of Illusions, Andrew Bacevich offers a thoughtful, well-informed, and deeply humane critique of the self-absorbed grandiosity that dominates American foreign policy. He is one of a handful of sane voices contributing to the national conversation, and this is an indispensable book for our troubled times.”―Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation“This astute analysis of how the United States squandered its ‘cold war victory’ shows how the elites wasted the peace dividend with policies favoring global neoliberalism, military hegemony, and radical individualism, paralyzing Washington and delivering the oval office to a patently incompetent candidate.”―Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, Editor, Commonweal (retired)“America’s most important challenges preceded Trump and will outlast him, Andrew Bacevich argues in this searing and powerful account of U.S. politics. This book will anger many readers, but it should also ignite overdue debate about permanent war enabled by public apathy, and economic inequality produced by globalized neoliberalism.”―Mary Dudziak, author of War Time“As clear-headed as always, as honest as usual, Andrew Bacevich gives us a brilliant account of how the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War brought on not the end of history but an explosion of American hubris and an era of excess that blinded our political class to reality, stunted citizenship, undermined governance, and ignited angry disenchantment among great swaths of the public, enabling a real-life Captain Queeg to seize the helm, shouting ‘Full Steam Ahead’ toward monumental disaster. Unless, says Bacevich in his compelling conclusion, we come to our senses.”―Bill Moyers Read more About the Author Andrew J. Bacevich is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. A graduate of both the U.S. Military Academy and Princeton University, he served in the U.S. Army for twenty-three years. His recent books include The Limits of Power, America’s War for the Greater Middle East, and Twilight of the American Century. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the London Review of Books, and the American Conservative, among other publications. Read more Customers Review: If you know Bacevich’s works you will not need encouragement to seek this one. I approached his first publication with trepidation, what would one discover from a retired West Point educated colonel on topic: “The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War”– Truth. Here he backs up to the Cold War, its ‘victorious’ ending and the resulting effects of perceiving ourselves as in charge of the world.Andrew Bacevich is saying what many writers are saying today – We (here Americans) must find a way to depart from the status quo engineered by our elites and restructure the way we live giving up notions refined for us in the post Cold War period and looking at the illnesses that are America today. (A blistering list pages 146-149.)“The end of the Cold War promised the fulfillment of a distinctly American version of modernity. Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency testifies to the abject failure of that project.” p. 202And that is not about Trump but where we have wander as a nation in our misguided actions to rule the world flowing from acceptance of ‘the end of history’ perception, and the multi-driven disintegration of our togetherness as a people, to the fractured reality that made 2016 possible.“Real debate about real choices would allow for the possibility of some alternative to globalized neoliberalism and the inequality that it produces—for example, an economy based on stewardship rather than satisfying an ever-growing appetite for consumption.It would reject militarized hegemony as a fantasy and reassess the reliance on so-called volunteers to fight never-ending wars.It would consider the possibility of freedom entailing obligations as well as rights.Finally, it would examine the wreckage caused by abandoning the concept of a federal government consisting of three coequal branches.” p. 199“The existing political establishment has no incentive to promote or even permit any such debate. Nor do any of the other centers of power in twenty-first-century America, including the national security apparatus, the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the Washington “swamp” that candidate Trump once vowed to drain. They all benefit from the status quo and are devoted to perpetuating its well-oiled mechanisms for bestowing wealth, status, and privilege on the few while withholding them from the many.So real debate conducive to genuine change is unlikely to come from above.” pp. 199-200Bacevich is the scholar providing the syllabus for those debates – will they occur? He lists the periods in our history where transformative changes have occurred and hold the belief that it can happen again and suggestions for directions.It is clear that we are in an historical period any way you care to see it (1/2020) frightening?Could be viewed as a dreary topic, Andrew Bacevich makes it exciting; few can tussle with their times so effectively. | |
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