In a substantial new afterword to his classic account of the collapse of American triumphalism in the wake of World War II, Tom Engelhardt carries that story into the twenty-first century. He explores how, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the younger George Bush headed for the Wild West (Osama bin Laden, “Wanted, Dead or Alive”); how his administration brought “victory culture” roaring back as part of its Global War on Terror and its rush to invade Saddam Husseins's Iraq; and how, from its “Mission Accomplished” moment on, its various stories of triumph crashed and burned in that land.

TOM ENGELHARDT, for fifteen years a senior editor at Pantheon, is now consulting editor at Metropolitan Books, a Fellow of the Nation Institute, and a Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley. He is a regular book reviewer and essayist and is also creator and editor of the website Tomdispatch.com.

Preface to the 2007 Edition

Part I. War Story
1. Triumphalist Despair
2. Story Time
3. Ambush at Kamikaze Pass
4. Premonitions: The Asian Death of Victory Culture

Part II. Containments (1945-1962)
1. War Games
2. X Marks the Spot
3. The Enemy Disappears
4. The Haunting of Childhood
5. Entering the Twilight Zone

Part III. The Era of Reversals  (1962-1975)
1. The First Coming of G.I. Joe
2. The Invisible Government
3. Playing with Fire
4. Into the Charnel House of Language
5. The President as Mad Mullah
6. The Crossover Point
7. “Something Rather Dark and Bloody”
8. The War Crimes of Daniel Ellsberg
9. Ambush at Kamikaze Pass (II)
10. Besieged
11. Reconstruction

Part IV. Afterlife (1975-1994)

Part V. Victory Culture, The Sequel
1. Victory Culture, the Sequel: Crashing and Burning in Iraq

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index