San Antonio College Library

Taking a critical look at America's dedication to war as panacea and as Washington's primary method for leading the world, this book reflects on such topics as the killing of innocents, how actual killing is usually ignored in war discussions and reporting, the lifetime impact of frontline duty, and more.

Although radically different, the Vietnam War, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School shootings, and the attacks of 9/11 all shattered myths of national identity. Vietnam was a war the United States didn't win; Oklahoma City revealed domestic terrorism in the heartland; Columbine debunked legends of high school as an idyllic time; and 9/11 demonstrated U.S. vulnerability to international terrorism. "Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam...

"A leading expert's exploration of the past, present, and future of public monuments in America. An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? And who gets to decide which ones should stay up and which should come down? Erin L. Thompson, the country's leading...

"Four decades after its end, the American war in Vietnam still haunts the nation's collective memory. Its lessons, real and imagined, continue to shape government policies and military strategies, while the divisions it spawned infect domestic politics and fuel the so-called culture wars. In Forever Vietnam, David Kieran shows how the contested memory of the Vietnam War has affected the commemoration of other events, and how those acts of remembrance...

Most Americans today are unaware of how revered Grant was in his lifetime. Joan Waugh uncovers the reasons behind the rise and fall of his renown, underscoring as well the fluctuating memory of the Civil War itself.

"A Strange and Fearful Interest explores how photography and other media were used to describe, to explain, and perhaps to come to terms with the national trauma of the American Civil War. The volume focuses on the Battle of Antietam, not only the bloodiest day in the nation's history but also the first in which photographs of American battlefield dead were made; the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the national mourning that ensued, and the execution...