Synopses & Reviews
Over the past three decades, the United States has embraced the death penalty with tenacious enthusiasm. While most of those countries whose legal systems and cultures are normally compared to the United States have abolished capital punishment, the United States continues to employ this ultimate tool of punishment. The death penalty has achieved an unparalleled prominence in our public life and left an indelible imprint on our politics and culture. It has also provoked intense scholarly debate, much of it devoted to explaining the roots of American exceptionalism.
Americas Death Penalty takes a different approach to the issue by examining the historical and theoretical assumptions that have underpinned the discussion of capital punishment in the United States today. At various times the death penalty has been portrayed as an anachronism, an inheritance, or an innovation, with little reflection on the consequences that flow from the choice of words. This volume represents an effort to restore the sense of capital punishment as a question caught up in history. Edited by leading scholars of crime and justice, these original essays pursue different strategies for unsettling the usual terms of the debate. In particular, the authors use comparative and historical investigations of both Europe and America in order to cast fresh light on familiar questions about the meaning of capital punishment. This volume is essential reading for understanding the death penalty in America.
Contributors: David Garland, Douglas Hay, Randall McGowen, Michael Meranze, Rebecca McLennan, and Jonathan Simon.
Review
"An extraordinary synthesis of social and military history which throws new light on the story of the air combat in Korea." - Ronald H. Spector, author of After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam
Review
"Sherwood provides a definitve account of Air Force pilots, their training, operations and battles, in the Korean War." - Virginia Pilot
Review
"Sherwood thoroughly documents the superb performance of air force fighter pilots during the Korean War. They met the best pilots China and the Soviet Union had to offer—and won. In doing so, the author has competently mined the extensive documentary resources of the Air Force History and Museums Program and made constructive use of memoirs and interviews."
"Sherwood paints a vivid and realistic portrait of the culture of Korean War pilots, examining the motivations, their methods, and the effect that being a fighter pilot had on their personal lives."
"An extraordinary synthesis of social and military history which throws new light on the story of the air combat in Korea."
"Sherwood provides a definitve account of Air Force pilots, their training, operations and battles, in the Korean War."
Review
“[F]ascinating and well written…A worthy addition to the historical analysis of the death penalty”-Library Journal,
Review
“If I were asked to recommend a single book that puts the vexed and emotionally charged question of the death penalty into an intelligible historical and contemporary political perspective it would be this one. The introduction sets the stage beautifully and the essays that follow allow readers to come at the problem from a variety of mutually reinforcing perspectives. It is a model for intellectually rigorous scholarship on a morally exigent matter.” -Thomas W. Laqueur,Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley
Review
“This is a book that gives profoundly important answers, but not easy ones. Six leading figures discuss the American death penalty in this volume. All six leave us wondering whether the simple stories we like to tell can possibly be adequate.&8221; -James Q. Whitman,Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law, Yale Law School
Review
"Reading this book is like attending a highly charged graduate-level symposium. The essays are fascinating and well written but assume familiarity with the material... What distinguishes this volume is the contributing editors' refusal to accept conventional analysis of the death penalty... Academics and serious scholars of the death penalty will appreciate this innovative approach. A worthy addition to the historical analysis of the death penalty for knowledgeable readers."-Library Journal,
Synopsis
The United States Air Force fought as a truly independent service for the first time during the Korean War. Ruling the skies in many celebrated aerial battles, even against the advanced Soviet MiG-15, American fighter pilots reigned supreme. Yet they also destroyed virtually every major town and city in North Korea, demolished its entire crop irrigation system and killed close to one million civilians.
The self-confidence and willingness to take risks which defined the lives of these men became a trademark of the fighter pilot culture, what author John Darrell Sherwood here refers to as the flight suit attitude. In Officers in Flight Suits, John Darrell Sherwood takes a closer look at the flight suit officer's life by drawing on memoirs, diaries, letters, novels, unit records, and personal papers as well as interviews with over fifty veterans who served in the Air Force in Korea. Tracing their lives from their training to the flight suit culture they developed, the author demonstrates how their unique lifestyle affected their performance in battle and their attitudes toward others, particularly women, in their off-duty activities.
Synopsis
Sherwood recounts the story of American Air Force pilots in the Korean War and the development of a lasting fighter-pilot culture
The United States Air Force fought as a truly independent service for the first time during the Korean War. Ruling the skies in many celebrated aerial battles, even against the advanced Soviet MiG-15, American fighter pilots reigned supreme. Yet they also destroyed virtually every major town and city in North Korea, demolished its entire crop irrigation system and killed close to one million civilians.
The self-confidence and willingness to take risks which defined the lives of these men became a trademark of the fighter pilot culture, what author John Darrell Sherwood here refers to as the flight suit attitude. In Officers in Flight Suits, John Darrell Sherwood takes a closer look at the flight suit officer's life by drawing on memoirs, diaries, letters, novels, unit records, and personal papers as well as interviews with over fifty veterans who served in the Air Force in Korea. Tracing their lives from their training to the flight suit culture they developed, the author demonstrates how their unique lifestyle affected their performance in battle and their attitudes toward others, particularly women, in their off-duty activities.
About the Author
David Garland is professor of sociology and law at New York University. He is the author of
Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition.
Randall McGowen is professor of history at the University of Oregon and co-author of The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd: Forgery and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century London.
Michael Meranze is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of Laboratories of Virtue.