War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination

By Howard Bruce Franklin

Book Overview

Sweeping through two centuries of American culture and military history, War Stars comes to a startling new understanding of issues crucial to the survival of civilization and the human species. Vividly written and filled with dazzling insights, this unique book explores the cultural history of superweapons from Robert Fulton's eighteenth-century submarine through the strategic bomber and atomic bomb to Star Wars. H. Bruce Franklin tellingly reveals how and why the American quest for the ultimate defensive weapon--guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals--has led to the creation of forces increasingly capable of automated global annihilation.
Franklin explores over two hundred movies, novels, and stories, from obscure pre-World War I fiction that influenced Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan to such modern classics as Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, and Dr. Strangelove. He demonstrates how the American imagination continually shapes ingenious new superweapons while engendering their antitheses in art and action. With its brilliant interweaving of culture, science, technology, and history, War Stars has received high praise from scientists, literary scholars, film critics, activists, and historians alike.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195066928
• ISBN13: 9780195066920
• Release Date: November 1990
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Level 1........

You know the feeling you get from a book that gets better and more interesting as you read it. This is one of those books. He is a very good writer. I listened to a Chomsky talk/interview who recommended the book. I thought SciFi was crap. But he showed it to be a kind of wonderful window of our thoughts, fears and hopes for the far or not so far future. Example after example of superweapons from 1798 - 1980's that were touted as the final weapon that would make war obsolete are exposed as fantasy. Now we face weapons that if used will make us obsolete. I must read......