On the evening of September 11, 2002, with the Statue of Liberty shimmering in the background, television cameras captured President George W. Bush as he advocated the charge for war against Iraq. This carefully staged performance, writes Susan Brewer, was the culmination of a long tradition of sophisticated wartime propaganda in America. In Why America Fights, Brewer offers a fascinating history of how successive presidents have conducted what Donald Rumsfeld calls "perception management," from McKinley's war in the Philippines to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her intriguing account ranges from analyses of wartime messages to descriptions of the actual operations, from the dissemination of patriotic ads and posters to the management of newspaper, radio, and TV media. When Woodrow Wilson carried the nation into World War I, he created the Committee on Public Information, led by George Creel, who called his job "the world's greatest adventure in advertising." In World War II, Roosevelt's Office of War Information avowed a "strategy of truth," though government propaganda still depicted Japanese soldiers as buck-toothed savages. After examining the ultimately failed struggle to cast the Vietnam War in a favorable light, Brewer shows how the Bush White House drew explicit lessons from that history as it engaged in an unprecedented effort to sell a preemptive war in Iraq. Yet the thrust of its message was not much different from McKinley's pronouncements about America's civilizing mission. Impressively researched and argued, filled with surprising details, Why America Fights shows how presidents have consistently drummed up support for foreign wars by appealing to what Americans want to believe about themselves.

About the Author
Susan A. Brewer is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She is the author of To Win the Peace: British Propaganda in the United States during World War II.

Reviews
Susan Brewer's meticulously researched and engagingly written book is a strong addition to the burgeoning literature on U.S. propaganda. ... Why America Fights masterfully distills a huge body of work into a narrative that is approachable and thoughtprovoking. In addition to providing a persuasive analysis of U.S. propaganda, it is a marvelous introduction to key events in the history of U.S. foreign relations. * Journal of Cold War Studies *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199753963
Author Susan A. Brewer
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 476g
Dimensions(mm) 155mm * 231mm * 23mm