LOOKING FOR THE GOOD WAR by Elizabeth D. Samet

I finished Elizabeth D. Samet Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness over the weekend. Took me about a week to read its 350 pages. I heard about it thanks to review in The New York Times and The Washington Post; there was also an interview with the author on The Majority Report podcast (wow, can't believe it was all the way back in December).

Looking for the Good War was OK. I gave it two stars over at LibraryThing. The book doesn't really live up to its title. She talks a little bit how the movie Saving Private Ryan and Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation book mythologized World War II, but it's all scattershot, like a Chris Hedges book. Samet talks about Civil War times and the Vietnam War. I dunno, I had trouble following her mode of thought. Of course, her obfuscation may have been intentional — she is a professor at West Point after all.

One cool thing about the book is that it introduced me to the term “premature anti-fascist", which was what the government classified dissenters who were against countries, like Italy, when the U.S. was still friendly towards such fascist countries.

Another cool thing was that Samet said John Ford was a Confederate sympathizer. Makes sense considering all the westerns he made. Weird that movie buffs never talk about that fact of his legacy.

. . . premature anti-fascist, abbreviated PAF, became a code word for communist.

p.112, Chapter 2, “Dead-Shot American Cowboys”

. . . John Adam's recognition that no political beginning can entirely shed the innate corruptions of power and ambition.

p. 223, Chapter Four, "War, What Is It Good For?"