Postwar America, 1945-1971

"Sometimes to be silent is to lie." -Miguel de Unamuno.The book begins on 8/6/45, when in a burst of righteous brutality, America introduced the nuclear age at Hiroshima. ...this quietly, passionate, opinionated work go[es] on to examine... the decison to drop the bomb, the Truman Doctrine in Greece, America's worldwide imperialism, corporate power and the profit motive, the conflicts of race (particularly the rebellion of black Americans), justice and injustice and finally the ...seeds of change.Howard Zinn's life is a product of the America he describes on these pages. In the last weeks of WWII... he participated in the bombing of a German encampment located near a bucolic French village. The payload was napalm, then a new weapon in the American arsenal, and the strike not only wiped out the intended target, but the French village as well. The memory of that wanton destruction never left him.