The Lone Leopard, the new novel by Dr. Sharifullah Dorani, speaks to Afghanistan’s diversity, historical turbulence and future uncertainty through the coming-of-age story of four friends; Ahmad, Bakhtash, Wazir and the defiant young woman Frishta – as their intersecting, often conflicting paths are shaped by years of civil war, Taliban rule and American occupation. Continue reading
Supersoldiers are often found in comic books and cinemas, but anthropologist Andrew Bickford covers the real attempts to bring the hero off the page and into reality. Chemical Heroes follows the development of the US military’s efforts to biomedically enhance their soldiers in response to the prediction that the future of warfare is a pharmaceutical battlefield. Continue reading
Historical amnesia has created the impression that the reconstruction of Germany and Japan along liberal capitalist lines was a foregone conclusion in 1945. In reality, however, the decision to occupy was a contested question for both Washington’s decision-makers and for soldiers on the ground, many of whom would become reluctant participants in America’s project of democratic nation-building. Continue reading
Megan Hunt Introduces the HOTCUS Postgraduate Conference Review Series On September 9th 2016, Northumbria University hosted the annual Postgraduate Conference for Historians of the Twentieth-Century United States (HOTCUS), around the theme of ‘Winning Minds and Hearts: Constructing National Identity in US History.’ With traditional academic panels, developmental roundtables, and a… Continue reading
Since 1999 all attempts by the US government to open formal military bases in Latin America have failed. This leads one to assume the US has lost much of its military influence in the region. However, the existence of so-called quasi-bases, or informal bases, discussed in Sebastian Bitar’s book, demonstrates that the US has managed to maintain its military influence. Quasi-bases differ from formal bases in no other way than that they lack a formal lease agreement for use of facilities. Essentially, quasi-bases serve the same purposes as formal bases, but exist in a cloud of secrecy. Continue reading