Book dossier

House of War

by James Carroll

In this book, Carroll advances a controversial thesis: the Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more. He marshals a trove of often chilling evidence, recounting how "the Building" and its denizens achieved what Eisenhower called "a disastrous rise of misplaced power"--The unprecedented bombing of Germany and Japan during World War II to the "shock and awe" of Iraq. He charts the U.S. nuclear buildup, which far outpaced that of the USSR and has outlived it. He reveals how consistently the Building has found new enemies just as old threats--and funding--evaporate. He demonstrates how Pentagon policy brought about U.S. indifference to genocide during the 1990s. And he shows how the forces that attacked the Pentagon on 9/11 were set in motion exactly sixty years earlier, on September 11, 1941, when ground was broken for the house of war.--From publisher description.