Book cover of Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America

Book description

Argues that America's defeat in Vietnam and challenges to the status quo have created a crisis in American identity, and have given birth to a reactionary new war culture

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Why read it?

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

I first read this book as a student in the 1990s, and it has always stayed with me, becoming more and more relevant as time has gone by.

Covering films like Rambo: First Blood Part II, Red Dawn, and Top Gun, magazines such as Soldier of Fortune, weekend paintballers, the NRA, and the foreign policy (mis)adventures of the Reagan and Bush administrations, alongside the activities of various white supremacists, Gibson’s book is a wholly enlightening account of the ongoing appeal of guns, violence, paramilitarism, and what we would now call “toxic masculinity” in American life.

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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Book cover of A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America

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