Dirty Wars

Landscape, Power, and Waste in Western American Literature

By: John Beck

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Hardcover | 1 December 2009

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Since World War II, the American West has become the nation's military arsenal, proving ground, and disposal site. Through a wide-ranging discussion of recent literature produced in and about the West, Dirty Wars explores how the region's iconic landscapes, invested with myths of national virtue, have obscured the West's crucial role in a post-World War II age of "permanent war." In readings of western-particularly southwestern-literature, John Beck provides a historically informed account of how the military-industrial economy, established to protect the United States after Pearl Harbor, has instead produced western waste lands and "waste populations" as the enemies and collateral casualties of a permanent state of emergency. Beck offers new readings of writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Don DeLillo, Rebecca Solnit, Julie Otsuka, and Terry Tempest Williams. He also draws on a variety of sources in history, political theory, philosophy, environmental studies, and other fields. Throughout Dirty Wars, he identifies resonances between different experiences and representations of the West that allow us to think about internment policies, the manufacture of atomic weapons, the culture of Cold War security, border policing, and toxic pollution as part of a broader program of a sustained and invasive management of western space.

Industry Reviews

"This meticulous, well-informed study should prove valuable to multiple fields, including American and western American literatures, American studies, and ecocriticism."-S. K. Bernardin, CHOICE
"Dirty Wars is a profoundly ambitious book showcasing John Beck's considerable scholarly and critical abilities."-Bill D. Toth, Western American Literature
"Dirty Wars should be of interest to readers in a variety of specialties, not only contemporary American literature but also environmental history, military history, Western history, cultural studies, and, of course, American studies."-Michael L. Johnson, American Studies

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction History Earliest Times to Present Day 20th Century History from 1900 to 2000 Military History Regional & National History History of the Americas Warfare & Defence Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature General Literary Studies

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction Dirty Wars	p. 1
The Purloined Landscape	p. 19
The Prehistory of the Permanent War Economy	p. 49
Dust Breeding Narratives of Inter(n)ment	p. 73
Learning from Los Alamos	p. 101
Gridlocked and Homeless	p. 125
Loomings Dread in West Texas	p. 157
After Nature Gothic Contamination	p. 177
After Nature Writing	p. 203
The West as Cold War Museum	p. 233
The Fringe of Empire	p. 253
Conclusion Endless War	p. 283
Notes	p. 297
Index	p. 339
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Dirty Wars

Landscape, Power, and Waste in Western American Literature

Industry Reviews

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