War By Other Means, Daniel Akst
War By Other Means, Daniel Akst
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War By Other Means
The Pacifists of the Greatest Generation Who Revolutionized Resistance

Author: Daniel Akst

Narrator: Justin Price

Unabridged: 13 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/14/2023


Synopsis

Pacifists who fought against the Second World War faced insurmountable odds—but their resistance, philosophy, and strategies fostered a tradition of activism that shaped America right up to the present day.

In this provocative and deeply researched work of history, Akst takes listeners into the wild, heady, and uncertain times of America on the brink of a world war, following four fascinating resisters and their daring exploits: David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Dwight MacDonald, and Bayard Rustin. The lives of these diverse anti-war advocates—a principled and passionate seminary student, a Catholic anarchist, a high-brow intellectual leftist, and an African-American pacifist and agitator—create the perfect prism through which to see World War II from a new angle, that of the opposition, as well as to show how great and lasting their achievements were.

The resisters did not stop the war, of course, but their impact would be felt for decades. Many of them went on to lead the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the two most important social stands of the second half of the twentieth century. The various World War II resisters pioneered non-violent protest in America, popularized Gandhian principles, and desegregated the first prison mess halls. Theirs is a story that has never been told.

About Daniel Akst

A native New Yorker, Daniel Akst is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Slate, and other leading publications. He has written scores of book reviews over the years and was a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. He has been a Koret Fellow at the University of California (Berkeley) Graduate School of Journalism, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC, and a public policy fellow at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeff on October 20, 2022

WWII Like You've Never Seen It Before. This is an account primarily of WWII and specifically a few particular people and their associates within the war - and these are people who you may have heard of, but likely never heard of their actions within the WWII period. As the description states, some o......more

Goodreads review by Anne on July 11, 2023

This engaging book is a masterful portrayal of a pivotal, yet understudied chapter in American history. Journalist Dan Akst illuminates the courageous journey of four key pacifists—David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Dwight MacDonald, and Bayard Rustin—and connects their struggles to the upheaval of the 1......more

Goodreads review by Alex on February 19, 2024

2.5/5. Informative but flat and scattered. Certain chapters retained my attention, like anything on Bayard Rustin and the peace-nonviolence movement following WWII. But everything else seemed entangled and jumbled from the start. Certain descriptive language was also questionable, certainly around h......more

Goodreads review by Laura on February 01, 2023

We tend to think of resistance to war as being a 1960's Vietnam War event but this book informs us of all the activity against World War II. It is written in an engaging and informative manner which makes it hard to put down. It's fascinating to discover that it wasn't just the "American Firsters" w......more

Goodreads review by Mike on April 27, 2024

I've often heard that "there were pacifists and antiwar activities even in/before WWII", and often wondered what the story of all that was. Who were these pacifists, how did they resist a war so universally considered "a good war", what became of them? This history is well-written, kept my attention......more