Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-century History

Description

From British bombing in Iraq in the early 1920s to the most recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, this detailed analysis explores the history of indiscriminate bombing, examining the fundamental questions of how strategies of mass killing originated and have been employed for decades. The book includes contributions from scholars in the US and Europe as well as bold new argument by Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa claiming that it was the Soviet invasion rather than atomic bombing that led to the Japanese surrender of the Pacific.

Yuki Tanaka is a research professor at Hiroshima Peace Institute of Hiroshima City University and a coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Journal. He is a co-editor, with Marilyn B. Young, of Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History (The New Press). Marilyn B. Young is a professor of history at New York University. She is a co-editor (with Lloyd C. Gardner) of The New American Empire: A 21st Century Teach-In on U.S. Foreign Policy and Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past and (with Yuki Tanaka) of Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History, all published by The New Press. She lives in New York City.

"Makes a cogent case for reassessing the effectiveness of air campaigns and how power influences accountability." -Japan Times