Book cover of Imperial Brotherhood

Book description

This provocative book begins with a question about the Vietnam War. How is it, asks Robert D. Dean, that American policymakers - men who prided themselves on "hardheaded pragmatism" and shunned "fuzzy idealism" - could have committed the nation to such a ruinous, costly, and protracted war? The answer, he…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Imperial Brotherhood as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In the opening salvo of the second wave feminist movement in the West, philosopher Simone de Beauvoir memorably argued that men's gender often goes unnoticed, as if manhood were simply the neutral human condition.

Dean's book counters this common blind spot by demonstrating how the supposedly neutral categories of manhood, class privilege, and whiteness have significantly shaped US foreign policy. Specifically, he examines how a homogeneous group of upper-class white men led to disastrous US policy decisions in Vietnam.

These policymakers, raised in exclusive boarding schools, men's clubs, and military hierarchies that excluded women and people of color, used gendered…

If you love Imperial Brotherhood...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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