{"title":"Philip D Beidler","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"beautiful-war-book-philip-d-beidler-9780817359614","title":"Beautiful War","description":"A probing and holistic meditation on the key question: Why do we continue to make art, and thus beauty, out of war?   Beautiful War: Studies in a Dreadful Fascination is a wide-ranging exploration of armed conflict as depicted in art that illustrates the constant presence of war in our everyday lives. Philip D. Beidler investigates the unending assimilation and pervasive presence of the idea of war in popular culture, the impulses behind the making of art out of war, and the unending and debatably aimless trajectories of war itself.     Beidler's critical scope spans from Shakespeare's plays, through the Victorian battle paintings of Lady Butler, into the post–World War I writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf, and up to twenty-first-century films such as The Hurt Locker and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. As these works of art have become ubiquitous in contemporary culture, the many faces of war clearly spill over into our art and media, and Beidler argues that these portrayals in turn shift the perception of war from a savage truth to a concept.    Beautiful War argues that the representation of war in the arts has always been, and continues to be, an incredibly powerful force. Incorporating painting, music, photography, literature, and film, Beidler traces a disturbing but fundamental truth: that war has always provided an aesthetic inspiration while serving ends as various and complex as ideological or geopolitical history, public memory, and mass entertainment.  Beautiful War is a bold and vivid account of the role of war and military conflict as a subject of art that offers much of value to literary and cultural critics, historians, veterans, students of art history and communication studies, and those interested in expanding their understanding of art and media's influence on contemporary values and memories of the past.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733077074193,"sku":"NGR9780817359614","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0817359613.jpg?v=1763484052"},{"product_id":"american-wars-american-peace-book-philip-d-beidler-9780820329697","title":"American Wars, American Peace","description":"\u003cp\u003eAs a writer, Philip D. Beidler has often drawn on his combat experience in Vietnam and his deep engagement with American popular culture. His essays tap these sources in powerful, truth-telling ways. In \u003ci\u003eAmerican Wars, American Peace\u003c\/i\u003e, another voice emerges, distinct yet also tied to Beidler's wartime memories and his love of literature, film, and music. It is the voice of one of the baby-boom progeny of the 'Greatest Generation' who at home and abroad became the foot soldiers not just in Vietnam but in the Peace Corps, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and beyond. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBeidler has experienced enough of history to question the kinds of peace that one empire after another has tried to impose on the world at whatever immense costs. As he reflects on terrorism, patriotism, geopolitics, sacrifice, propaganda, and more, Beidler revisits his generation's inherited vision of national purpose--and he asks what happened. These essays are a sobering wake-up call for even the most informed and conscientious citizen.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363072250129,"sku":"CIN082032969XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/082032969X.jpg?v=1751011529"},{"product_id":"first-books-book-philip-d-beidler-9780817309855","title":"First Books","description":"\u003cb\u003eThis case study in cultural mythmaking shows how antebellum Alabama created itself out of its own printed texts, from treatises on law and history to satire, poetry, and domestic novels. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eEarly 19th-century Alabama was a society still in the making. Now Philip Beidler tells how the first books written and published in the state influenced the formation of Alabama's literary and political culture. As Beidler shows, virtually overnight early Alabama found itself in possession of the social, political, and economic conditions required to jump start a traditional literary culture in the old Anglo-European model: property-based class relationships, large concentrations of personal wealth, and professional and merchant classes of similar social, political, educational, and literary views.\u003c\/p\u003eBeidler examines the work of well-known writers such as humorist Johnson J. Hooper and novelist Caroline Lee Hentz, and takes on other classic pieces like Albert J. Pickett's\u003ci\u003e History of Alabama\u003c\/i\u003e and Alexander Beaufort Meek's epic poem\u0026gt;\u003ci\u003eThe Red Eagle\u003c\/i\u003e. Beidler also considers lesser-known works like Lewis B. Sewall's verse satire\u003ci\u003e The Adventures of Sir John Falstaff the I\u003c\/i\u003e, Henry Hitchcock's groundbreaking legal volume\u0026gt;\u003ci\u003eAlabama Justice of the Peace\u003c\/i\u003e, and Octavia Walton Levert's\u0026gt;\u003ci\u003eSouvenirs of Travel\u003c\/i\u003e. Most of these works were written by and for society's elite, and although many celebrate the establishment of an ordered way of life, they also preserve the biases of authors who refused to write about slavery yet continually focused on the extermination of Native Americans.\u003ci\u003eFirst Books\u003c\/i\u003e returns us to the world of early Alabama that these texts not only recorded but helped create. Written with flair and a strong individual voice, it will appeal not only to scholars of Alabama history and literature but also to anyone interested in the antebellum South.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50369644921105,"sku":"CIN0817309853G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0817309853.jpg?v=1751108164"},{"product_id":"late-thoughts-on-an-old-war-book-philip-d-beidler-9780820330013","title":"Late Thoughts on an Old War","description":"\u003cp\u003ePhilip D. Beidler, who served as an armored cavalry platoon leader in Vietnam, sees less and less of the hard-won perspective of the common soldier in what America has made of that war. Each passing year, he says, dulls our sense of immediacy about Vietnam's costs, opening wider the temptation to make it something more necessary, neatly contained, and justifiable than it should ever become. Here Beidler draws on deeply personal memories to reflect on the war's lingering aftereffects and the shallow, evasive ways we deal with them. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBeidler brings back the war he knew in chapters on its vocabulary, music, literature, and film. His catalog of soldier slang reveals how finely a tour of Vietnam could hone one's sense of absurdity. His survey of the war's pop hits looks for meaning in the soundtrack many veterans still hear in their heads. Beidler also explains how Viet Pulp literature about snipers, tunnel rats, and other hard-core types has pushed aside masterpieces like Duong Thu Huong's \u003ci\u003eNovel without a Name\u003c\/i\u003e. Likewise we learn why the movie \u003ci\u003eThe Deer Hunter\u003c\/i\u003e doesn't get it about Vietnam but why \u003ci\u003ePlatoon\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWe Were Soldiers\u003c\/i\u003e sometimes nearly do. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs Beidler takes measure of his own wartime politics and morals, he ponders the divergent careers of such figures as William Calley, the army lieutenant whose name is synonymous with the civilian massacre at My Lai, and an old friend, poet John Balaban, a conscientious objector who performed alternative duty in Vietnam as a schoolteacher and hospital worker. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBeidler also looks at Vietnam alongside other conflicts--including the war on international terrorism. He once hoped, he says, that Vietnam had fractured our sense of providential destiny and geopolitical invincibility but now realizes, with dismay, that those myths are still with us. Americans have always wanted their apocalypses, writes Beidler, and they have always wanted them now.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50371273654545,"sku":"CIN0820330019G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52145470243089,"sku":"NLS9780820330013","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53490210210065,"sku":"NIN9780820330013","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B00KIGVQA4.jpg?v=1766138208"},{"product_id":"american-literature-and-the-experience-of-vietnam-book-philip-d-beidler-9780820306124","title":"American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam","description":"Der 1937 geborene Hans Henning Kaysers setzt mit diesem Buch seine Erinnerungen an die Nachkriegsjahre im Westen Deutschlands fort. Der Abbruch seiner Schilderungen mit dem Jahre 1949 erschien im Nachhinein allzu willkurlich. Die Generation des Autors erlebte zwar in den funfziger Jahren keine mit dem Bombenkrieg vergleichbaren dramatischen Geschehnisse mehr. Doch gerade die erste Halfte der Funfziger wurde von den Heranwachsenden vor dem Hintergrund der volligen Verarmung und Isolierung unseres Landes nach der schlimmsten Niederlage in seiner Geschichte mit Staunen erlebt. Den Neuanfang und den Optimismus der fruhen funfziger Jahre lebendig zu machen, versucht Hans Henning Kaysers in seinem neuen Buch. Daneben schildert der Autor auch die deutsche Jugendbewegung der Nachkriegszeit, die mit ihren eingeschrankten Mitteln durch Tippeltouren, Kohtenlager und Trampen nach draussen drangte und dabei ein neues Gemeinschaftserlebnis fand. Hans Henning Kaysers war einer der Jungen, die im Jahre 1950 ohne Pass und Visum uber die grune Grenze nach Osterreich und Italien trampten, eine angesichts strenger Visumsvorschriften des europaischen Auslands sensationelle Unternehmung. Das Buch schildert diese aufsehenerregende Fahrt, soweit der Autor an ihr teilnehmen konnte. Den jungen Leuten von heute durfte es schwerfallen, sich vorzustellen, wie es in unserem Land vor sechzig Jahren ausgesehen hat. Doch sind in diesen Jahren die Ursprunge unseres heutigen Alltags angelegt worden. Dies festzuhalten, hat den Autor angespornt. Dabei hat er sich streng an seine Erinnerung gehalten und nichts hinzugefugt, was nicht wirklich geschehen ist. Der Titel des Buches spielt auf das Dilemma von Hans Henning Kaysers an, in seiner Schulzeit immer der Jungste und der Kleinste gewesen zu sein.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50477888045329,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50477888700689,"sku":"CIN0820306126A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820306126.jpg?v=1751169935"},{"product_id":"american-literature-and-the-experience-of-vietnam-book-philip-d-beidler-9780820330242","title":"American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam","description":"American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam is a perceptive and evocative book that is both a comprehensive discussion of the literature of the war and a study of literature and literary consciousness considered in relation to the larger process of cultural myth-making.  In his exploration of the ways in which writers have tried to make sense of the Vietnam experience, Philip Beidler brings to light a whole literature that in its moments of fullest achievement quite literally “creates” a Vietnam more real than reality. In his discussion of the literature of the war he turns his attention to a wide variety of literary texts: novels, plays, poems, memoirs, oral histories, and works of documentary and reportage.  Beidler begins with an analysis of the peculiar difficulties involved in writing about an experience like Vietnam. He moves from the early attempts to deal with the experience (including Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? and Arthur Kopit’s Indians) to more recent works as diverse as Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers, Tim O’Brien’s Going after Cacciato, Phillip Caputo’s A Rumor of War, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, the plays of David Rabe, the poems of John Balaban and Bruce Weigl, and recently published experiments in oral history such as Al Santoli’s Everything We Had and Mark Baker’s Nam.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51281737023761,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51281738334481,"sku":"NIN9780820330242","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52352556794129,"sku":"NLS9780820330242","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820330248.jpg?v=1751233535"},{"product_id":"scriptures-for-a-generation-book-philip-d-beidler-9780820352503","title":"Scriptures for a Generation","description":"At the heart of Scriptures for a Generation are dozens of detailed entries discussing individual writers and the particular importance of their texts - bona fide 60s classics ranging from The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five to Carlos Casteneda's The Teachings of Don Juan and Our Bodies, Ourselves.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52130074820881,"sku":"NLS9780820352503","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780820352503.jpg?v=1757501921"},{"product_id":"scriptures-for-a-generation-book-philip-d-beidler-9780820317878","title":"Scriptures for a Generation","description":"More than 50 writers are profiled in this survey of the literature of the 1960s including Timothy Leary, Malcolm X, Helen Gurley Brown and Rachel Carson. 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