Author: H. R. McMaster File Type: epub blockquoteThe war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C.H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion)Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. McMaster pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants.A page-turning narrative, Dereliction Of Duty focuses on a fascinating cast of characters President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress and the American public.McMasters only book, Dereliction of Duty is an explosive and authoritative new look at the controversy concerning the United States involvement in Vietnam.blockquote

Author: Tim Di Muzio File Type: pdf How might an objective observer conceive of what humans have accomplished as a species over its brief history? Benjamin argues that history can be judged as one giant catastrophe. Liberals suggest that this is to sombre an assessment and that human history can be read as a story of greater and greater progress in human rights, prosperity and the decrease of arbitrary and extra-judicial violence. But is there a third reading of history, one that neither interprets human history as a giant catastrophe or endless progress? Could we not say that human development has been a tragedy? This book explores the idea of human development as a tragedy from the perspective of capitalist power. Although the argument of this book draws heavily on critical political economy, the analysis considers interdisciplinary literature in an effort to explore how major revolutions have transformed human social relations of power and created certain path dependencies that may ultimately lead to our downfall as a species. Intellectually sophisticated and readable, this book offers a provocative genealogy of capitalist power and the tragedy of human development. **ReviewWith The Tragedy of Human Development, Di Muzio pulls off an incredible feat. Combining an encyclopaedic sweep of human history with rigorous research and written in an engaging style, he provides a provocative and timely geneaology of our current predicament and how it can be understood as resulting from the enduring mode of power known as capital as power, manifest in trends towards monetization, commodification, exclusion and war. (Peter Newell, co-author of Climate Capitalism and author of Globalization & the Environment Capitalism, Ecology and Power, Professor of International Relations, University of Sussex) Di Muzio offers an original analysis of how to understand and overcome the current crisis of social reproduction the threats posed by environmental destruction and war to human civilization the roots of which Di Muzio traces to the capitalist organization of society. This is perhaps the most pressing issue of our time and, as such, the book deserves a wide readership. (Damien Cahill, Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney) In this sweeping and highly readable historical account, Tim Di Muzio traces the evolution of capital as power from its embryonic beginnings in the early civilizations of the Fertile Crescent to the hyper-capitalized world of the twenty-first century. A captivating must-read for anyone seeking to understand how the capitalist mode of power undermines humanity and threatens its future. (Jonathan Nitzan, co-author of Capital as Power A Study of Order and Creorder) About the Author Tim Di Muzio is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Global Political Economy in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is author of Carbon Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015), The 1% and the Rest of Us (Zed, 2015), and with Richard H. Robbins, Debt as Power (2016) and An Anthropology of Money (2017).