Bestselling author David Shields analyzed over a decade's worth of front-page war photographs fromTheNew York Timesand came to a shocking conclusion: the photo-editing process ofthe "paper of record,"by way of pretty, heroic, and lavishly aesthetic image selection, pullsthe woolover the eyes of its readers; Shields forces us to face not only the the media's complicity in dubious and catastrophic military campaigns but our own as well.This powerful media mouthpiece, the mightyTimes, far from being a check on governmental power, is in reality a massive amplifier for its dark forces by virtue of the way it aestheticizeswarfare. Anyone baffled by the willful American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan can't help but see in this book how eagerly and invariably theTimesled the way in making the case for these wars through the manipulation of its visuals. Shields forces the reader to weigh the consequences of our own passivity in the face of these images' opiatic numbing. The photographs gathered inWar Is Beautiful, often beautiful and always artful, are filters of reality rather than the documentary journalism they purport to be.

Beautiful War explores the interdependent political, linguistic, and erotic registers of lesbian feminism in Monique Wittig's novels, querying in particular how they function collectively to destabilize male hegemony and heterosexism. Beginning with the assertion that Wittig expressly dismantles the Classical veneration of la belle femme in order to create an agent more capable of social change (la femme belliqueuse), the author traces the permutations of violence through her four novels, L'Opoponax, Les Guérillères, Le Corps Lesbien, and Virgile, Non and examines the relevance of brutality to Wittig's feminist agenda. Drawing on literary criticism, intellectual and political history, queer theory, and feminist theory in his readings of the primary texts, the author argues that Wittig's oeuvre constitutes a progressive textual actualization of paradigm shifts toward gender parity and a permanent banishment of the primacy of male and heterosexist political and sexual discourse.

"A study of war and its myriad representations in art, history, and memory, from the early modern era to the present." ... Provided by publisher.

A New York Times bestseller! Perfect for fans of Divine Rivals, a critically acclaimed, multi-layered romance set in the perilous days of World Wars I and II, where gods hold the fates--and the hearts--of four mortals in their hands. They are Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette. A classical pianist from London, a British would-be architect-turned-soldier, a Harlem-born ragtime genius in the U.S. Army, and a Belgian orphan with a gorgeous voice and a devastating past. Their story, as told by goddess Aphrodite, who must spin the tale or face judgment on Mount Olympus, is filled with hope and heartbreak, prejudice and passion, and reveals that, though War is a formidable force, it's no match for the transcendent power of Love. Hailed by critics, Lovely War has received seven starred reviews and is an indie bestseller. Author Julie Berry has been called "a modern master of historical fiction" by Bookpage and "a celestially inspired storyteller" by the New York Times, and Lovely War is truly her masterwork.

"In 1937 James Neugass, a promising thirty-two-year-old poet and novelist who had already been praised in the New York Times and The Nation, joined 2,800 other passionate and idealistic young Americans who traveled to Spain as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - an unlikely mix of students, artists, journalists, industrial workers, and intellectuals united in their desire to combat European fascism. Working as an ambulance driver for Dr. Edward Barsky, the legendary American surgeon, Neugass volunteered in Spain during a critical turning point in the war, as Republicans and Fascists battled for control over the strategic ally important city of Teruel." "Ever the writer, Neugass seized any quiet, candlelit moment in a frontline hospital or the driver's seat of his ambulance to work on the powerfully honest and insightful chronicle of his service that would become War Is Beautiful. The memoir combines fast-paced accounts of darting onto battlefields to rescue the wounded and the dead with elegiscal renderings of days spent "on alert" in an ever-changing series of sharply observed Spanish towns, enduring that most difficult of wartime activities: waiting." "Nuanced and deeply lyrical, War Is Beautiful offers a rare, authentic glimpse into one of history's most tragic military conflicts. Although Neugass survived several shrapnel wounds and eventually left Spain, he died soon after his return to New York, leaving behind a widow and two young sons. His manuscript remained lost for the next sixty years until it turned up in a used bookshop in Vermont Published now for the first time, and including some of Neugass's own photos of the war in Spain, War Is Beautiful is poised to take its place alongside works by Erich Maria Remarque, Irene Nemkovsky, Wilfred Owen, and George Orwell as a transcendent contemporaneous rendering of wartime life."--BOOK JACKET.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Perfect for fans of Divine Rivals, a critically acclaimed, multi-layered romance set in the perilous days of World Wars I and II, where gods hold the fates--and the hearts--of four mortals in their hands. "Pick an adjective—sweeping, sprawling, epic, Olympian—and yet none quite conveys the emotional width and depth of Julie Berry’s brilliant novel."—The Washington Post They are Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette. A classical pianist from London, a British would-be architect-turned-soldier, a Harlem-born ragtime genius in the U.S. Army, and a Belgian orphan with a gorgeous voice and a devastating past. Their story, as told by goddess Aphrodite, who must spin the tale or face judgment on Mount Olympus, is filled with hope and heartbreak, prejudice and passion, and reveals that, though War is a formidable force, it's no match for the transcendent power of Love. Hailed by critics, Lovely War has received seven starred reviews and is an indie bestseller. Author Julie Berry has been called "a modern master of historical fiction" by Bookpage and "a celestially inspired storyteller" by the New York Times, and Lovely War is truly her masterwork.