What do George W. Bush, Wal-Mart, Halliburton, gangsta rap, and SUVs have in common? They're all among the hundred ways in which America is screwing up the world. The country that was responsible for many, if not most, of the twentieth century's most important scientific and technological advancements now demonizes its scientists and thinkers in the twenty-first, while dumbing down its youth with anti-Darwin/pro-"Intelligent Design" propaganda. The longtime paragon of personal freedoms now supports torture and illegal wiretapping—spreading its principles and policies at gunpoint while ruthlessly bombing the world with Big Macs and Mickey Mouse ears. At once serious-minded and satirical, John Tirman's 100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World is an insightful, unabashed, entertaining, and distressing look at where we've gone terribly wrong—from the destruction of the environment to the promotion of abhorrent personal health and eating habits to the "wussification" of the free press—an alternately admonishing and amusing call to arms for patriotic Blue America.

100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World

Business & Money

John Tirman

Education & Reference

Harper-perennial

Details the human, economic, and political dimensions of several major armaments deals brokered by the U.S. government. This tale of modern warfare is told in 3 interwoven stories: the world of Washington policymaking; the hot spots of the Middle East, particularly Turkey; and a key venue of Amer. arms manufacturing, Connecticut. These 3 disparate places have combined to produce one of the world's great human-rights catastrophes -- the destruction of "Kurdistan," the unsovereign homeland to 20 million people. Makes a powerful argument that the U.S. economy can break its dependency on what amounts to the sale of death.

Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade

Economics

Free Press/Macmillan

Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979–1988

James G. Blight

Janet M. Lang

Malcolm Byrne

Hussein Banai

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Americans are greatly concerned about the number of our troops killed in battle—100,000 dead in World War I; 300,000 in World War II; 33,000 in the Korean War; 58,000 in Vietnam; 4,500 in Iraq; over 1,000 in Afghanistan—and rightly so. But why are we so indifferent, often oblivious, to the far greater number of casualties suffered by those we fight and those we fight for? This is the compelling, largely unasked question John Tirman answers in The Deaths of Others. Between six and seven million people died in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq alone, the majority of them civilians. And yet Americans devote little attention to these deaths. Other countries, however, do pay attention, and Tirman argues that if we want to understand why there is so much anti-Americanism around the world, the first place to look is how we conduct war. We understandably strive to protect our own troops, but our rules of engagement with the enemy are another matter. From atomic weapons and carpet bombing in World War II to napalm and daisy cutters in Vietnam and beyond, we have used our weapons intentionally to kill large numbers of civilians and terrorize our adversaries into surrender. Americans, however, are mostly ignorant of these facts, believing that American wars are essentially just, necessary, and "good." Tirman investigates the history of casualties caused by American forces in order to explain why America remains so unpopular and why US armed forces operate the way they do. Trenchant and passionate, The Deaths of Others forces listeners to consider the tragic consequences of American military action not just for Americans, but especially for those we fight.

Deaths of Others, The

History

Military

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

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Books by John Tirman