front cover of Neverending Wars
Neverending Wars
The International Community, Weak States, and the Perpetuation of Civil War
Ann Hironaka
Harvard University Press, 2008

Since 1945, the average length of civil wars has increased three-fold. What can explain this startling fact? It can't be ethnic hatreds and injustices—these have been around for centuries. In Neverending Wars, Ann Hironaka points to the crucial role of the international community in propping up many new and weak states that resulted from the decolonization movement after World War II. These impoverished states are prone to conflicts and lack the necessary resources to resolve them decisively. International aid and external military intervention from the international community often perpetuate such conflicts. And the Cold War further exacerbated the problem by providing large amounts of military aid. The continual infusion of weapons and resources can prolong such wars indefinitely.

This timely book will provide an entirely new way to look at recent, vicious civil wars, failed states, and the terrorist movements that emerge in their wake.

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front cover of New Jerseyans in the Civil War
New Jerseyans in the Civil War
For Union and Liberty
Jackson, William J
Rutgers University Press, 2006

The Civil War divided New Jersey just as it did the nation. As a small state sandwiched between two large and powerful neighbors, New Jersey had always enthusiastically supported the creation of a strong central government. On the other hand, many New Jersey citizens did not share the anti-slavery sentiments of the North; they supported property rights of slave owners and believed in the natural inferiority of blacks. Subsequently, when southern states began to secede from the Union to form the Confederacy, New Jerseyans were left divided and confused.

William J. Jackson examines the ironies, paradoxes, and contradictions that characterized New Jersey's unique historical role in the war. This is the only book to incorporate social and political history with that of military history and strategy. Civil War aficionados and historians will also welcome Jackson's analysis of the participation of New Jersey African Americans on the home front and in the military.

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The Normality of Civil War
Armed Groups and Everyday Life in Angola
Teresa Koloma Beck
Campus Verlag, 2012
In The Normality of Civil War, Teresa Koloma Beck uses theories of the everyday to analyze the social processes of civil war, specifically the type of conflict that is characterized by the expansion of violence into so-called normal life. She looks beyond simplistic notions of victims and perpetrators to reveal the complex shifting interdependencies that emerge during wartime. She also explores  how the process of normalization affects both armed groups and the civilian population. A brief but smart analysis, The Normality of Civil War gets at the root of the social dynamics of war and what lies ahead for the participants after its end.

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The North Reports the Civil War
J Cutler Andrews
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
Andrews presents the drama of the Civil War as seen through the eyes of reporters’ own diaries, dispatches, and printed news stories.
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Not Slave, Not Free
The African American Economic Experience Since the Civil War
Jay R. Mandle
Duke University Press, 1992
Since its publication in 1978, Jay R. Mandle’s The Roots of Black Poverty has come to be seen as a landmark publication in the study of the political economy of the postbellum South. In Not Slave, Not Free, Mandle substantially revises and updates his earlier work in light of significant new research. The new edition provides an enhanced historical perspective on the African American economic experience since emancipation.
Not Slave, Not Free focuses first on rural southern society before World War II and the role played by African Americans in that setting. The South was the least developed part of the United States, a fact that Mandle considers fundamental in accounting for the poverty of African Americans in the years before the War. At the same time, however, the concentration of the black labor force in plantation work significantly retarded the South’s economic growth. Tracing the postwar migration of blacks from the South, Mandle shifts attention to the problems and opportunities that confronted African Americans in cities. He shows how occupational segregation and income growth accelerated this migration.
Instrumental to an understanding of the history of the political economy of the United States, this book also directs readers and policymakers to the central issues confronting African Americans today.
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