Aftermath: The Remnants of War - Hardcover

Webster, Donovan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679431950 ISBN 13: 9780679431954

Publisher: Pantheon Books/Random House, 1996

Synopsis

In riveting and revelatory detail, Aftermath documents the ways in which wars have transformed the terrain of the battlefield into landscapes of enduring terror and memory: in France, where millions of acres of farmland are cordoned off to all but a corps of demolition experts responsible for the undetonated bombs and mines of World War I that are now rising up in fields, gardens, and backyards, in a sixty-square-mile area outside Stalingrad that was a cauldron of destruction in 1941 and is today an endless field of bones; in the Nevada deserts, where America waged a hidden nuclear war against itself in the 1950s, the results of which are only now becoming apparent; in Vietnam, where a nation's effort to remove the physical detritus of war has created biologic and psychological devastation; in Kuwait, where terrifyingly sophisticated warfare was followed by the Sisyphean task of making an uninhabitable desert capable of sustaining life.
Only now, at century's end, can we begin to see how the destructive, often lethal remnants of past wars remain deeply, fatally embedded in the present.

About this title

About the Author

A former senior editor at Outside magazine, Webster has written for The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Smithsonian.

From the Back Cover

and revelatory detail, Aftermath documents the ways in which wars have transformed the terrain of the battlefield into landscapes of memory and enduring terror: in France, where millions of acres of farmland are cordoned off to all but a corps of demolition experts responsible for the undetonated bombs and mines of World War I that are now rising up in fields, gardens, and backyards; in a sixty-square-mile area outside Stalingrad that was a cauldron of destruction in 1941 and is today an endless field of bones; in the Nevada deserts, where America waged a hidden nuclear war against itself in the 1950's, the results of which are only now becoming apparent; in Vietnam, where a nation's effort to remove the physical detritus of war has created psychological and genetic devastation; in Kuwait, where terrifyingly sophisticated warfare was followed by the Sisyphean task of making an uninhabitable desert capable of sustaining life.

Aftermath excavates our century's darkest history, revealing tha

From the Inside Flap

and revelatory detail, Aftermath documents the ways in which wars have transformed the terrain of the battlefield into landscapes of memory and enduring terror: in France, where millions of acres of farmland are cordoned off to all but a corps of demolition experts responsible for the undetonated bombs and mines of World War I that are now rising up in fields, gardens, and backyards; in a sixty-square-mile area outside Stalingrad that was a cauldron of destruction in 1941 and is today an endless field of bones; in the Nevada deserts, where America waged a hidden nuclear war against itself in the 1950's, the results of which are only now becoming apparent; in Vietnam, where a nation's effort to remove the physical detritus of war has created psychological and genetic devastation; in Kuwait, where terrifyingly sophisticated warfare was followed by the Sisyphean task of making an uninhabitable desert capable of sustaining life.<br><br>Aftermath excavates our century's darkest history, revealing tha

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon Books/Random House
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679431950
• ISBN 13: 9780679431954
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 279