Synopses & Reviews
John Brown is usually remembered as a terrorist whose unbridled hatred of slavery drove him to the ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Tried and executed for seizing the arsenal and attempting to spur a liberation movement among the slaves, Brown was the ultimate
cause celebre for a country on the brink of civil war.
“Fire from the Midst of You” situates Brown within the religious and social context of a nation steeped in racism, showing his roots in Puritan abolitionism. DeCaro explores Brown's unusual family heritage as well as his business and personal losses, retracing his path to the Southern gallows. In contrast to the popular image of Brown as a violent fanatic, DeCaro contextualizes Brown's actions, emphasizing the intensely religious nature of the antebellum U.S. in which he lived. He articulates the nature of Brown's radical faith and shows that, when viewed in the context of his times, he was not the religious fanatic that many have understood him to be. DeCaro calls Brown a “Protestant saint”—an imperfect believer seeking to realize his own perceived calling in divine providence.
In line with the post-millennial theology of his day, Brown understood God as working through mankind and the church to renew and revive sinful humanity. He read the Bible not only as God's word, but as God's word to John Brown. DeCaro traces Brown's life and development to show how by forging faith as a radical weapon, Brown forced the entire nation to a point of crisis.
“Fire from the Midst of You” defies the standard narrative with a new reading of John Brown. Here is the man that the preeminent Black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois called a "mighty warning" and the one Malcolm X called “a real white liberal.”
Review
“Skillfully contextualizes John Brown's religious and abolitionist development within his Calvinist background and the evangelical movement of ninteenth-century America.”
-Jean Libby,editor of John Brown Mysteries
Review
“A welcome addition to the literature on John Brown's life and legacy. One of the book's strongest features is its detailed description of Brown's longstanding contacts and friendships with black Americans. But DeCaro—s most important achievement is to have explored in greater depth and more sympathetically than any previous scholar the precise nature of the religious convictions that shaped Brown's career as a freedom fighter.”
-Gerald W. McFarland,author of A Scattered People: An American Family Moves West
Review
“Decaro sets out to establish Brown's legacy as one grounded in an alternative evangelical tradition that decried pacifism, developed a doctrine of holy war, and called any church that did not actively work for abolition anti-Christian. He places Brown in his religious milieu, reforming the legacy of this religious extremist.”
-Library Journal,
Review
“A welcome addition to the literature of John Brown.”-Publishers Weekly,
Review
“A welcome addition to the literature on John Brown's life and legacy. One of the book's strongest features is its detailed description of Brown's longstanding contacts and friendships with black Americans. But DeCaro—s most important achievement is to have explored in greater depth and more sympathetically than any previous scholar the precise nature of the religious convictions that shaped Brown's career as a freedom fighter.”
“Decaro sets out to establish Brown's legacy as one grounded in an alternative evangelical tradition that decried pacifism, developed a doctrine of holy war, and called any church that did not actively work for abolition anti-Christian. He places Brown in his religious milieu, reforming the legacy of this religious extremist.”
“A welcome addition to the literature of John Brown.”
“Traces the religious and political trajectory of John Brown not as the fanatic bent on waging war against the United States, but as a religious revolutionary, like Malcolm X, following a biblical command that places justice before peace. Louis DeCaro’s fresh interpretation of Brown and his time does more than rescue a maligned figure in U.S. history from an army of scholarly foes. He offers a deeply nuanced character profile of Brown and his family, a charismatic abolitionist who took his Bible seriously, and shook his country the better to shake slavery out of it. No future study of John Brown can ignore this book.”
“Skillfully contextualizes John Brown's religious and abolitionist development within his Calvinist background and the evangelical movement of ninteenth-century America.”
Review
“Traces the religious and political trajectory of John Brown not as the fanatic bent on waging war against the United States, but as a religious revolutionary, like Malcolm X, following a biblical command that places justice before peace. Louis DeCaros fresh interpretation of Brown and his time does more than rescue a maligned figure in U.S. history from an army of scholarly foes. He offers a deeply nuanced character profile of Brown and his family, a charismatic abolitionist who took his Bible seriously, and shook his country the better to shake slavery out of it. No future study of John Brown can ignore this book.”
-William Loren Katz,author of Eyewitness: A Living Documentary of the African American Contribution to American History
Review
"Gian Gentile provides a first rate analysis of the Gulf War Air Power Survey against the backdrop World War II's U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. His well-researched critique also offers much insight about the Air Force mindset during the past half century."-Mark A. Clodfelter,Professor of Military History, The National War College, Washington, D.C.
Review
"The most thorough and accurate analysis ever written about the conduct and results of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. Gentile demonstrates that underneath its veneer of objectivity clashed a number of conflicting agendas and personalities, and in many ways the conclusions were preordained. This work shows the difficulty inherent in analyzing the results of any air campaign. Recent problems with bomb damage assessment in the Balkans reinforce his conclusions."-Conrad Crane,Professor of Military History, United States Military Academy, West Point
Review
How Effective is Strategic Bombing is a thought provoking analysis on the subject of air power and bombing and the use of surveys to explain the effects of air power on the enemy in conflict." -Parameters,
Synopsis
Reveals a complex new portrait of John Brown, radical abolitionist and leader of the 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry
John Brown is usually remembered as a terrorist whose unbridled hatred of slavery drove him to the ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Tried and executed for seizing the arsenal and attempting to spur a liberation movement among the slaves, Brown was the ultimate cause celebre for a country on the brink of civil war.
"Fire from the Midst of You" situates Brown within the religious and social context of a nation steeped in racism, showing his roots in Puritan abolitionism. DeCaro explores Brown's unusual family heritage as well as his business and personal losses, retracing his path to the Southern gallows. In contrast to the popular image of Brown as a violent fanatic, DeCaro contextualizes Brown's actions, emphasizing the intensely religious nature of the antebellum US in which he lived. He articulates the nature of Brown's radical faith and shows that, when viewed in the context of his times, he was not the religious fanatic that many have understood him to be. DeCaro calls Brown a "Protestant saint"--an imperfect believer seeking to realize his own perceived calling in divine providence.
In line with the post-millennial theology of his day, Brown understood God as working through mankind and the church to renew and revive sinful humanity. He read the Bible not only as God's word, but as God's word to John Brown. DeCaro traces Brown's life and development to show how by forging faith as a radical weapon, Brown forced the entire nation to a point of crisis.
"Fire from the Midst of You" defies the standard narrative with a new reading of John Brown. Here is the man that the preeminent Black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois called a "mighty warning" and the one Malcolm X called "a real white liberal."
Synopsis
This biography offers fresh insight into the life and actions of this renowned figure in American history.
Synopsis
In the wake of World War II, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and President Harry S. Truman established the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, to determine exactly how effectively strategic air power had been applied in the European theater and in the Pacific. The final study, consisting of over 330 separate reports and annexes, was staggering in its size and emphatic in its conclusions. As such it has for decades been used as an objective primary source and a guiding text, a veritable Bible for historians of air power.
In this aggressively revisionist volume, Gian Gentile examines afresh this influential document to reveal how it reflected to its very foundation the American conceptual approach to strategic bombing. In the process, he exposes the survey as largely tautological and thereby throwing into question many of the central tenets of American air power philosophy and strategy.
With a detailed chapter on the Gulf War and the resulting Gulf War Air Power Survey, and a concluding chapter on the lessons of the Kosovo air war, How Effective is Strategic Bombing? is the most comprehensive and important book on air power strategy in decades.
About the Author
A former Assistant Professor of History at the United States Military Academy, West Point, Gian P. Gentile is an active duty army officer and is currently a Division Operations Planner with the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas. He has served in command and staff positions in armored units in Germany, Korea, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University.