Strategic assessment in war

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William Stueck

This first truly international history of the Korean War argues that its timing, its course, and its outcome made it in effect a substitute for World War III. Stueck draws on recently available materials from seven countries, plus the archives of the United Nations, presenting a detailed narrative of the diplomacy of the conflict and a broad assessment of its critical role in the Cold War. In Stueck's view, contributors to the UN cause in Korea provided support not out of any abstract commitment to a universal system of collective security but because they saw an opportunity to influence U.S. policy. At the moment of Chinese intervention in Korea in the fall of 1950, as in other instances prior to the armistice in July 1953, NATO allies and Third World neutrals succeeded in curbing American adventurism and so in blocking the spread of hostilities to other parts of the world. While conceding the tragic and brutal nature of the war, Stueck suggests that it helped to prevent the occurrence of an even more destructive conflict in Europe.

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Charles A. Simmons

Examines the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Black Dispatch (Oklahoma City), and the Jackson (Mississippi) Advocate and their coverage of national events. Details the beginnings of the black press, focusing on how they reported the anti-slavery movement, the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Also examines the Great migration of blacks to the industrial north in the early twentieth century and World War I, followed by the black press response to World War II and the civil rights movement.

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Mushirul Hasan

This book is about the 'destiny of India's Muslims', more than 110 million of them. It covers, in the early chapters, the origins of Muslim separatism under the British, the making of the partition of India and its meaning for a host of Muslim communities, families and individuals. Chapter 5 examines the establishment of the 'Nehruvian consensus' in the 1940s and 1950s with its secular vision for India's future, and Chapter 6 attempts to delineate secular identities and the Muslim organisations that ran counter to this process. Chapter 7 illustrates the role of Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia as the bearers of the 'beacon lights' of modern and secular understandings of the Muslim future in India. The following chapter examines the breakup of the Nehruvian consensus from the 1960s through to the 1990s, looking in particular at the reasons for the growth of communal activity and the retreat of both Muslims and Hindus into communal political camps. The final section of the book surveys the state of India's Muslims in the period after 6 December 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished. The argument is that Muslim religious and political leaders have failed. There still exists a secular platform, if somewhat narrowed; secular Indian Muslim intellectuals must stand up and be counted on that platform, and take a lead. The author speaks with a moderate and secular voice, and his distinctive contribution needs to be widely heard both inside and outside India.

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Michele Stenehjem Gerber

"On the Home Front is the history of the Hanford Nuclear Site, America's most notorious plutonium production facility. Located in southeastern Washington State, the Hanford Site produced most of the plutonium used in the atomic bombs that effectively ended World War II. This book was made possible by the declassification in the 1980s of tens of thousands of government documents relating to the construction, operation, and maintenance of the site. In a new epilogue, Michele Stenehjem Gerber provides a detailed history and commentary on the first twelve years of the Hanford cleanup project - the largest waste cleanup program in world history."--BOOK JACKET.