Why read Selling the Korean War?

Book cover of Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion in the United States, 1950-1953

Book description

How presidents spark and sustain support for wars remains an enduring and significant problem. Korea was the first limited war the U.S. experienced in the contemporary period - the first recent war fought for something less than total victory. In Selling the Korean War, Steven Casey explores how President Truman…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Selling the Korean War as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrew Payne

Author

If you want to go a little deeper, you can’t do much better than this outstanding study of how Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower sought to sustain public support for the Korean War.

Written by a historian who knows his sources like the back of his hands, this book is jam-packed with evidence of the ways in which presidents try to control the narrative about an ongoing war. And beyond its impressive use of archival materials, it also challenges the conventional wisdom about a president’s ability to lead public opinion using the “bully pulpit.”

Presidents can and do try to…

From Andrew's list on the politics of war.