A first-of-its-kind gathering of the essential texts of the American antiwar tradition, from the Revolution to the war on terror: over 150 eloquent, provocative voices for peace. Library of America presents an unprecedented tribute to a great American literary tradition. War has been a reality of the American experience from the founding of the nation and in every generation there have been dedicated and passionate visionaries who have responded to this reality with vital calls for peace. Spanning from the Revolution to the war on terror, War No More gathers the essential texts of this uniquely American antiwar tradition in one volume for the first time. Classic expressions of conscience like Thoreau’s seminal “Civil Disobedience” lay the groundwork for such influential modern theorists of nonviolence as David Dellinger, Thomas Merton, and Barbara Deming. The long arc of the American antiwar movement is vividly traced in the urgent appeals of activists, made in soaring oratory and galvanizing song, and in dramatic dispatches from the front lines of antiwar protests. The voices of veterans, from the Civil War to the Iraq War, are prominently represented, as is the firsthand testimony of conscientious objectors. Contemporary writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Jonathan Schell, Nicholson Baker, and Jane Hirshfield, demonstrate the ongoing richness of this literature in the years since September 11, 2001. Featuring more than 150 eloquent and provocative writers in all, War No More is a bible for activists, a go-to resource for scholars and students, and an inspiring and fascinating story for every reader interested in the crosscurrents of war and peace in American history. From the Hardcover edition.

A compelling collection of speeches, articles, poetry, book excerpts, political cartoons, and more from the American antiwar tradition beginning with the War of 1812 offers the full range of the subject's richness and variety, with contributions from Daniel Webster, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Patrick Buchanan, and many others. Original.

We Who Dared to Say No to War uncovers some of the forgotten but compelling body of work from the American antiwar tradition—speeches, articles, poetry, book excerpts, political cartoons, and more—from people throughout our history who have opposed war. Beginning with the War of 1812, these selections cover every major American war up to the present and come from both the left and the right, from religious and secular viewpoints. There are many surprises, including a forgotten letter from a Christian theologian urging Confederate President Jefferson Davis to exempt Christians from the draft and a speech by Abraham Lincoln opposing the 1848 Mexican War. Among others, Daniel Webster, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Grover Cleveland, Eugene Debs, Robert Taft, Paul Craig Roberts, Patrick Buchanan, and Country Joe and the Fish make an appearance. This first-ever anthology of American antiwar writing offers the full range of the subject's richness and variety.

Until now, scholars have portrayed America's antiwar literature as an outgrowth of World War I, manifested in the works of writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. But in War No More, Cynthia Wachtell corrects the record by tracing the steady and inexorable rise of antiwar writing in American literature from the Civil War to the eve of World War I. Beginning with an examination of three very different renderings of the chaotic Battle of Chickamauga -- a diary entry by a northern infantry officer, a poem romanticizing war authored by a young southerner a few months later, and a gruesome story penned by the veteran Ambrose Bierce -- Wachtell traces the gradual shift in the late nineteenth century away from highly idealized depictions of the Civil War. Even as the war was under way, she shows, certain writers -- including Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, John William De Forest, and Nathaniel Hawthorne -- quietly questioned the meaning and morality of the conflict. As Wachtell demonstrates, antiwar writing made steady gains in public acceptance and popularity in the final years of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth, especially during the Spanish-American War and the war in the Philippines. While much of the era's war writing continued the long tradition of glorifying battle, works by Bierce, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, William James, and others increasingly presented war as immoral and the modernization and mechanization of combat as something to be deeply feared. Wachtell also explores, through the works of Theodore Roosevelt and others, the resistance that the antiwar impulse met. Drawing upon a wide range of published and unpublished sources, including letters, diaries, essays, poems, short stories, novels, memoirs, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles, and religious tracts, Wachtell makes strikingly clear that pacifism had never been more popular than in the years preceding World War I. War No More concludes by charting the development of antiwar literature from World War I to the present, thus offering the first comprehensive overview of one hundred and fifty years of American antiwar writing.

“The book addresses chronologically the most striking reactions of the art world to the rise of military engagement in Vietnam then in Cambodia.” —Guillaume LeBot, Critique d’art The Vietnam War (1964–1975) divided American society like no other war of the twentieth century, and some of the most memorable American art and art-related activism of the last fifty years protested U.S. involvement. At a time when Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art dominated the American art world, individual artists and art collectives played a significant role in antiwar protest and inspired subsequent generations of artists. This significant story of engagement, which has never been covered in a book-length survey before, is the subject of Kill for Peace. Writing for both general and academic audiences, Matthew Israel recounts the major moments in the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement and describes artists’ individual and collective responses to them. He discusses major artists such as Leon Golub, Edward Kienholz, Martha Rosler, Peter Saul, Nancy Spero, and Robert Morris; artists’ groups including the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC) and the Artists Protest Committee (APC); and iconic works of collective protest art such as AWC’s Q. And Babies? A. And Babies and APC’s The Artists Tower of Protest. Israel also formulates a typology of antiwar engagement, identifying and naming artists’ approaches to protest. These approaches range from extra-aesthetic actions—advertisements, strikes, walk-outs, and petitions without a visual aspect—to advance memorials, which were war memorials purposefully created before the war’s end that criticized both the war and the form and content of traditional war memorials. “Accessible and informative.” —Art Libraries Society of North America

War Is a Racket is a speech and a 1935 short book, by Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Based on his career military experience, Butler frankly discusses how business interests commercially benefit (including war profiteering) from warfare. He had been appointed commanding officer of the Gendarmerie during the United States occupation of Haiti, which lasted from 1915 to 1934.

This book examines representations of war throughout American literary history, providing a firm grounding in established criticism and opening up new lines of inquiry. Readers will find accessible yet sophisticated essays that lay out key questions and scholarship in the field. War and American Literature provides a comprehensive synthesis of the literature and scholarship of US war writing, illuminates how themes, texts, and authors resonate across time and wars, and provides multiple contexts in which texts and a war's literature can be framed. By focusing on American war writing, from the wars with the Native Americans and the Revolutionary War to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this volume illuminates the unique role representations of war have in the US imagination.