The United States of Fear

Tom Engelhardt THE UNITED STATES OF FEAR

Praise for The United States of Fear

“Tom Engelhardt, as always, focuses his laser-like intelligence on a core problem that the media avoid: Obama’s stunning embrace of Bush’s secret government by surveillance, torture, and sanctioned assassination. A stunning polemic.”

—Mike Davis, author of In Praise of Barbarians and Planet of Slums

Praise for The American Way of War

“A tour de force.”

—Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater

“There are a lot of ways to describe Tom Engelhardt’s astonishing service to this country’s conscience and imagination: you could portray him as our generation’s Orwell, standing aside from all conventional framings to see afresh our dilemmas and blind spots, as the diligent little boy sending in regular dispatches on the nakedness of the emperor and his empire, as a Bodhisattva dedicated to saving all beings through compassion and awareness, but analogies don’t really describe the mix of clear and sometimes hilarious writing, deep insight, superb information, empathy, and outrage that has been the core of Tom’s TomDispatches for almost a decade, or the extraordinary contribution they’ve made to the American dialogue. Check out this bundle of some of the best from that time span.”

—Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark and A Paradise Built in Hell

“They may have Blackwater/Xe, Halliburton, aircraft-carrier battle groups, deadly drones by the score, and the world’s largest military budget, but we have Tom Engelhardt—and a more powerful truth-seeking missile has seldom been invented. Long-time fans like me will be happy to see some of his most memorable pieces reprinted here, although woven together in a way that makes them still stronger; for anyone not yet familiar with his work, this is your chance to meet one of the most forceful analysts alive of our country’s dangerous, costly addiction to all things military.”

—Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars and King Leopold’s Ghost

“Tom Engelhardt is the I. F. Stone of the post–9/11 age—seeing what others miss, calling attention to contradictions that others willfully ignore, insisting that Americans examine in full precisely those things that make us most uncomfortable.”

—Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War

“Tom Engelhardt is among our most trenchant critics of American perpetual war. Like I. F. Stone in the 1960s, he has an uncanny ability to ferret out and see clearly the ugly truths hidden in government reports and statistics. No cynic, he always measures the sordid reality against a bright vision of an America that lives up to its highest ideals.”

—Juan R. Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan

“Like an extended Motown shuffle with some hard-hitting Stax breaks, and never devoid of an all-too-human sense of humor and pathos, Tom’s book takes us for the ride…. [I]nvaluable in showing how the empire walks the walk and talks the talk.”

—Pepe Escobar, Asia Times

“In The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, Tom Engelhardt provides a clear-eyed examination of U.S. foreign policy in the Bush and Obama years, and details unsparingly how Obama has inherited—and in many cases exacerbated—the ills of the Bush era…. [A]n important book for anyone hoping to understand how the U.S. arrived at its current predicament during the Bush years, and how it remains in this predicament despite Obama’s best efforts—or perhaps because of them.”

—Inter Press Service

“Tom Engelhardt’s biting look at United States militarism, The American Way of War… [is] pithy… [and] alarming…. He takes on our war-possessed world with clear-eyed, penetrating precision.”

—Mother Jones

“Essential… seamlessly edited… establishes him as one of the grand chroniclers of the post-9/11 era.”

—Dan Froomkin, Huffington Post

“These simple pleas for readers to reconsider an idea they might previously have taken for granted are one of the strengths of this book. Demonstrating Engelhardt’s experience as a professional editor, he avoids the overly strident or self-righteous condescension that characterizes too much online political writing, instead using clear and unvarnished prose to attack the fundamental principles of the post–September 11 mindset.”

—Foreign Policy in Focus

“American history does not begin with 9/11, yet the worldview of so many in the United States since then has been shaped by how the mainstream media had colored events following the terrorist attacks. But to break free from that distorted perception which bears little resemblance to reality—as people once knew it—one needs the help of a little imagination. In Tom Engelhardt’s The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, you could step back and see all the views that you had taken for granted challenged, as you indulge yourself in a world of ideas that are logical and straightforward but just were not quite vis-ible to you before. All of course are backed by key facts, sound analysis and invaluable context.”