The United States of War, David Vine
The United States of War, David Vine
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The United States of War
A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, From Columbus to the Islamic State

Author: David Vine

Narrator: Laural Merlington

Unabridged: 14 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/25/2021

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

The United States has been fighting wars constantly since invading Afghanistan in 2001. This nonstop warfare is far less exceptional than it might seem: the United States has been at war or has invaded other countries almost every year since independence. In The United States of War, David Vine traces this pattern of bloody conflict from Columbus's 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay through the 250-year expansion of a global US empire. Drawing on historical and firsthand anthropological research in fourteen countries and territories, The United States of War demonstrates how US leaders across generations have locked the United States in a self-perpetuating system of permanent war by constructing the world's largest-ever collection of foreign military bases—a global matrix that has made offensive interventionist wars more likely. Beyond exposing the profit-making desires, political interests, racism, and toxic masculinity underlying the country's relationship to war and empire, The United States of War shows how the long history of US military expansion shapes our daily lives, from today's multi-trillion–dollar wars to the pervasiveness of violence and militarism in everyday US life.

About David Vine

David Vine is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia and an associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Guardian, among other publications. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Randall on February 19, 2021

Since the US illegally invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the US government has sent 2.7 million people to fight in its forever wars. In that time the US has brought war to 22 countries. According to David, the US has been aggressively at war in foreign lands in all but 11 years of its existence. Japan’s......more

Goodreads review by Esteban on July 21, 2024

What an odious book to read, I even had to make month-long pauses because I couldn't take just how genocidal the United States of America is. Of course we all know their warring tendencies, and as a Mexican we are taught some in school, but just how far and at what degree they have taken their Europe......more

Goodreads review by Chris on May 31, 2021

This book is more of a history of US bases than of foreign conflicts, but it is nevertheless informative. Vine takes an alternative approach to US foreign policy, analyzing not the motivating forces behind military operations but their conditions of possibility, namely the global network of bases, b......more

Goodreads review by Mal on April 26, 2023

Military leaders famously protest that they love peace, not war. But the evidence suggests otherwise, as David Vine’s explosive book, The United States of War, makes abundantly clear. His book updates and sets in historical context the case laid out nearly twenty years ago in Blowback by former Cold......more

Goodreads review by Mark on March 24, 2023

The twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq seemed a fitting time to review this impressive examination of how the U.S. military has impacted the entire world and the prominence of violence at home. 32,000 Americans were injured, and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians died at the cost of $806 b......more

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