Read more
If the American foreign policy establishment is a grand citadel, Henry Kissinger is the specter haunting its dusty hallways. For half a century, he was an omnipresent figure in war rooms and at press briefings, dutifully shepherding the American empire through successive attempts at expansion. For multiple generations of antiwar activists, Kissinger personified the depravity of the US war machine. The Good Die Young assesses a career too frequently applauded in essays from respected scholars and journalists such as Gerald Horne, Carolyn Eisenberg, and Chip Gibbons, with an introduction from Bancroft Prize-winner Greg Grandin.The world Kissinger wrought is one we live in today, where ideal investment conditions are generated from the barrel of a gun. Today, global capitalism and United States hegemony are underwritten by the most powerful military ever devised. Any political vision worth fighting for must promise an end to the cycle of never-ending wars afflicting the world in the twenty-first century. Breaking that cycle means placing the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism in our crosshairs.The book follows Kissinger's fiery trajectory across the globe, covering Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. More than any other public figure, the life and career of this man illustrate the links between capitalism, empire, and the feedback loop of endless conflict that plagues us today.
List of contents
Preface - René Rojas, Bhaskar Sunkara, and Jonah Walters
Introduction: To Die at the Right Time - Greg Grandin
Americas
1. Kissinger and the South American Revolutions - Aldo Marchesi
2. Kissinger in Chile - René Rojas
3. Kissinger in Argentina - Leandro Morgenfeld
4. Kissinger in Central America - Hilary Goodfriend
Europe
5. Kissinger in Cyprus - Leandros Fischer
Middle East and Africa
6. Kissinger in Angola - Piero Gleijeses
7. Kissinger in South Africa - Gerald Horne
8. Kissinger in Western Sahara - Aubrey Bloomfield
9. Kissinger in the Gulf - Chip Gibbons
Asia
10. Kissinger in East Pakistan/Bangladesh - Mukhtar Mirjan
11. Kissinger in East Timor - Alex de Jong
12. Kissinger in Cambodia - Brett S. Morris
13. Kissinger in Vietnam and China - An Interview with Carolyn Eisenberg
14. From the War Room to Wall Street - Christy Thornton
Acknowledgments
About the Contributors
Notes
About the author
René Rojas is a sociologist studying neoliberalism in the Southern Cone. Originally from Chile, he received his PhD from New York University in 2016.Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of The Nation magazine, founder and editorial director of Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality. Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist who has published more than two hundred articles and essays about politics in outlets like the New York Times, The Nation, the Washington Post, and Le Monde.Jonah Walters is a researcher at Jacobin and a doctoral student in geography at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.Greg Grandin is the author of Empire's Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, Who is Rigoberta Menchú?, the award-winning The Blood of Guatemala, and the 2009 National Book Awards finalist Fordlandia. A professor of history at New York University and a Guggenheim fellow, Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, Nation, New Statesman, and New York Times.
Report
Among all this catharsis, no one could surpass the 'unbeatable levels of hater' reached by the lefty publishers Jacobin magazine and Verso Books...[The Good Die Young] features essays by celebrated scholars like Gerald Horne and Carolyn Eisenberg on the wide-spanning breadth of Kissinger's noxious foreign-policy legacy and the areas of the world still hurting thanks to his time in power. Nitish Pahwa Slate
