University of Chicago Press
Atrocities of the Mind
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Edited by:
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Preface by:
About this book
An essential collection of Dwight Macdonald’s prophetic essays on politics, art, and violence in twentieth-century America.
What does extreme violence do to human values? Does the concept of collective guilt make sense in assessing responsibility for genocide? Has modern mechanized society forever destroyed the possibility of peaceful resistance through art and civil disobedience? Atrocities of the Mind presents anew Dwight Macdonald, one of America’s foremost literary journalists and political activists, grappling with the hard questions of his time—and ours.
In this collection, Macdonald writes about major events—the Holocaust, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Gandhi’s assassination, the Vietnam War, and social phenomena such as mass shootings, campus protests, and police brutality—with clear-sighted and buoyant prose. He writes incisively about the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski, praises Dorothy Day’s pacifism, and reports circulating an antiwar petition in the White House Rose Garden. And not without effect: his essay “Our Invisible Poor” is said to have spurred the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty.
Norman Mailer memorably called Macdonald “a man with whom one might seldom agree but could never disrespect because he always told the truth as he saw the truth—a man therefore of the most incorruptible integrity.” In our America, reeling from political violence, Macdonald’s truth-telling reminds us how we got here and whom we might still become.
Reviews
“A necessary collection that displays Macdonald's astonishing range, his moral seriousness, and above all his resistance to cant. As a bonus, we also get fine essays by Bacevich and Summers, two intellectuals who embody the survival of Macdonald's proudly independent spirit amid the fatuous self-delusions of our historical moment.”
— Jackson Lears, author of "Rebirth of a Nation"“'Atrocities of the Mind' is a must-read. Macdonald’s intellectual journey is a stark reminder that even for someone as brilliant as him, understanding the core problems at play and knowing how to fix them are never easy.”
— John J. Mearsheimer, University of ChicagoTopics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
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Foreword: "Where, Our Mistake?"
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Introduction: The Last of the Free Individuals
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The Responsibility of Peoples
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On the Psychology of Killing
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My Favorite General
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Horrors-Ours and Theirs
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The Bomb
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Too Big
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Why Destroy Draft Cards?
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Gandhi
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The Pacifist Dilemma
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Homage to Twelve Judges
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I Choose the West
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Dorothy Day
137 -
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Massacre from the Air
157 -
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Politics Past
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America! America!
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A Good American
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Massachusetts vs. Mailer
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Hiroshima, Mon Amour
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Mein Kampf, the Movie
229 -
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Our Invisible Poor
233 -
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A Day at the White House
259 -
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To the Texas Society to Abolish Capital Punishment
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Cosa Nostra
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A General View of the Ruins
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To the Collector of Internal Revenue
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Index
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