Bruce Cumings’ Acclaimed History on the Korean War Being Adopted at the University of Mexico

September 29, 2010 at 8:03 pm Leave a comment

Here is a bracing account of a war that lingers in our collective memory as both ambiguous and unjustly ignored. For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953 that has long been overshadowed by World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror. But as Bruce Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight that still haunts contemporary events. And in a very real way, although its true roots and repercussions continue to be either misunderstood, forgotten, or willfully ignored, it is the war that helped form modern America’s relationship to the world.

With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought.

The University of Mexico’s Political Science Dept is using The Korean War for a course on Civil Wars this Fall 2010.

“. . .[A] powerful revisionist history of America’s intervention in Korea. . . . [A] sobering corrective.” —The New York Times

“The Korean War may be a polemic, but it is well-sourced. What is more, it is elegantly presented.” —The Wall Street Journal
Click here to read the New York Times book review

To read an excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

Entry filed under: Asian Studies, History, Military History. Tags: Asian History, Asian Studies, Civil War, History, Korean conflict, Korean War, military history, world history.