BiblioVault - Books about Peace

Harder than War

Catholic Peacemaking in Twentieth-Century America

McNeal, Patricia F.

Rutgers University Press, 1992

Patricia McNeal's comprehensive study of American Catholic peacemaking in the twentieth century documents the growth of pacifism and nonviolence within the American Catholic community, and assesses its impact on the church and the nation.

McNeal begins with the first official Catholic peace organization in the United States, the Catholic Association for International Peace, founded in 1927. An elitist lay organization supported by the church hierarchy, the CAIP based their opposition to war on the "just war" doctrine. With the emergence of pacifism among American Catholics in 1930s, Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Peace movement, added to the Catholic theological agenda the concepts of pacifism, conscientious objection, and nuclear pacifism. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement became the midwife in the formation of other Catholic peace organizations such as PAX, the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and PAX Christi-USA during the Vietnam War. Members of these groups cooperated with the broader peace movement in the United States. Their main focus became opposition to nuclear warfare and nuclear weapons.

During the Viet Nam War, Catholic Workers burned their draft cards and turned from nonviolence to resistance by practicing civil disobedience. Daniel and Philip Berrigan escalated that resistance when they destroyed draft files, and symbolically poured blood over and hammered nuclear weapons to awaken the national conscience to the life-ending effects of nuclear warfare.

McNeal concludes that Catholic peacemakers had the greatest impact not on the government but on the institutional church. In 1971 the American hierarchy judged that the Vietnam War was not a "just war." For the first time in the United States, and possibly in history, a national hierarchy announced as unjust a war being waged by its own nation.

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Here on the Edge

How a Small Group of World War II Conscientious Objectors Took Art and Peace from the Margins to the Mainstream

Steve McQuiddy

Oregon State University Press, 2013

Here on the Edge answers the growing interest in a long-neglected element of World War II history: the role of pacifism in what is often called “The Good War.” Steve McQuiddy shares the fascinating story of one conscientious objector camp located on the rain-soaked Oregon Coast, Civilian Public Service (CPS) Camp #56. As home to the Fine Arts Group at Waldport, the camp became a center of activity where artists and writers from across the country focused their work not so much on the current war, but on what kind of society might be possible when the shooting finally stopped.

They worked six days a week—planting trees, crushing rock, building roads, and fighting forest fires—in exchange for only room and board. At night, they published books under the imprint of the Untide Press. They produced plays, art, and music—all during their limited non-work hours, with little money and few resources. This influential group included poet William Everson, later known as Brother Antoninus, “the Beat Friar”; violinist Broadus Erle, founder of the New Music Quartet; fine arts printer Adrian Wilson; Kermit Sheets, co-founder of San Francisco’s Interplayers theater group; architect Kemper Nomland, Jr.; and internationally renowned sculptor Clayton James.

After the war, camp members went on to participate in the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance of the 1950s, which heavily influenced the Beat Generation of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder—who in turn inspired Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, leading the way to the 1960s upheavals epitomized by San Francisco’s Summer of Love.

As camp members engaged in creative acts, they were plowing ground for the next generation, when a new set of young people, facing a war of their own in Vietnam, would populate the massive peace movements of the 1960s.

Twenty years in the making and packed with original research, Here on the Edge is the definitive history of the Fine Arts Group at Waldport, documenting how their actions resonated far beyond the borders of the camp. It will appeal to readers interested in peace studies, World War II history, influences on the 1960s generation, and in the rich social and cultural history of the West Coast.

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The Horn of Africa

Intra-State and Inter-State Conflicts and Security

Edited by Redie Bereketeab and Cyril Obi

Pluto Press, 2013

The Horn of Africa, comprising Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia, is the most conflict-ridden region in Africa. This book explores the origins and impact of these conflicts at both an intra-state and inter-state level and the insecurity they create.

The contributors show how regional and international interventions have compounded pre-existing tensions and have been driven by competing national interests linked to the 'War on Terror' and acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia.

The Horn of Africa outlines proposals for multidimensional mechanisms for conflict resolution in the region. Issues of border demarcation, democratic deficit, crises of nation and state building, and the roles of political actors and traditional authorities are all clearly analysed.

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The Horrible Peace

British Veterans and the End of the Napoleonic Wars

Evan Wilson

University of Massachusetts Press, 2023

Few battles in world history provide a cleaner dividing line than Waterloo: before, there was Napoleon; after, there was the Pax Britannica. While Waterloo marked France’s defeat and Britain’s ascendance as an imperial power, the war was far from over for many soldiers and sailors, who were forced to contend with the lasting effects of battlefield trauma, the realities of an impossibly tight labor market, and growing social unrest. The Horrible Peace details a story of distress and discontent, of victory complicated by volcanism, and of the challenges facing Britain at the beginning of its victorious century.

Examining the process of demobilization and its consequences for British society, Evan Wilson draws on archival research and veterans’ memoirs to tell the story of this period through the experiences of veterans who struggled to reintegrate and soldiers and sailors who remained in service as Britain attempted to defend and expand the empire. Veterans were indeed central to Britain’s experience of peace, as they took to the streets to protest the government’s indifference to widespread unemployment and misery. The fighting did not stop at Waterloo.

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How to Look Good in a War

Justifying and Challenging State Violence

Brian Rappert

Pluto Press, 2012

How to Look Good in A War examines the methods used to depict, defend and justify the use of state violence. Many books have shown how 'truth is the first casualty of war' but this is the first to analyse exactly how pro-war narratives are constructed and normalised.

Brian Rappert details the 'upside-down' world of war in which revelation conceals, knowledge fosters uncertainty, and transparency obscures. He looks at government spin during recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya where officials manoeuvre between circulating and withholding information.

Examining how organised violence is justified, How to Look Good in A War draws on experiences from recent controversy to consider how ignorance about the operation of war is produced and how concerned individuals and groups can intervene to make a difference.

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