“Wetzel, who declared himself a conscientious objector before Pearl Harbor, spent the WWII years in prison. In this thin volume, he defines his pacifist belief with considerable passion, describing people he met and his struggle to maintain equilibrium especially during his time in a psycho ward.” —Publishers Weekly

A war is always a moral event. However, the most destructive war in human history has not received much moral scrutiny. The Good War That Wasn't--and Why It Matters examines the moral legacy of this war, especially for the United States. Drawing on the just war tradition and on moral values expressed in widely circulated statements of purpose for the war, the book asks: How did American participation in the war fit with just cause and just conduct criteria? Subsequently the book considers the impact of the war on American foreign policy in the years that followed. How did American actions cohere (or not) with the stated purposes for the war, especially self-determination for the peoples of the world and disarmament? Finally, the book looks at the witness of war opponents. Values expressed by war advocates were not actually furthered by the war. However, many war opponents did inspire efforts that effectively worked toward the goals of disarmament and self-determination. The Good War That Wasn't--and Why It Matters develops its arguments in pragmatic terms. It focuses on moral reasoning in a commonsense way in its challenge to widely held assumptions about World War II.

This comprehensive volume provides a wealth of information with annotated listings of more than 3,500 titles--a broad sampling of books on the war years 1939-1945. Includes both fiction and nonfiction works about all aspects of the war. Professional resources for educators aligned to the educational standards for social studies; technical references; periodicals and electronic resources; a directory of WWII museums, memorials, and other institutions; and topics for exploration complement this excellent library and classroom resource.

Cover -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Prison Memoir -- 2. Why I Refused to Register in the October 1940 Draft and a Little of What It Led To -- 3. My Resistance to World War II -- 4. My War and My Peace -- 5. My War on War -- 6. War Resistance in World War II -- 7. Reflections of a Religious War Objector (Half a Century Later) -- 8. Prison and Butterfly Wings -- 9. How the War Changed My Life -- 10. My Story of World War II -- Selected Additional Readings.

A powerful collection of essential American antiwar writings, from the Revolution to the war on terror—featuring over 150 eloquent, provocative voices for peace Library of America presents an unprecedented tribute to a great American literary tradition. War has been a reality of the American experience from the founding of the nation and in every generation there have been dedicated and passionate visionaries who have responded to this reality with vital calls for peace. Spanning from the American Revolution to the war on terror, War No More gathers the essential texts of this uniquely American antiwar tradition in one volume for the first time. Classic expressions of conscience like Thoreau’s seminal “Civil Disobedience” lay the groundwork for such influential modern theorists of nonviolence as David Dellinger, Thomas Merton, and Barbara Deming. The long arc of the American antiwar movement is vividly traced in the urgent appeals of activists, made in soaring oratory and galvanizing song, and in dramatic dispatches from the front lines of antiwar protests. The voices of veterans, from the Civil War to the Iraq War, are prominently represented, as is the firsthand testimony of conscientious objectors. Contemporary writers—including Barbara Kingsolver, Jonathan Schell, Nicholson Baker, and Jane Hirshfield—demonstrate the ongoing richness of this literature in the years since September 11, 2001. Featuring more than 150 eloquent and provocative writers in all, War No More is a bible for activists, a go-to resource for scholars and students, and an inspiring and fascinating story for every reader interested in the crosscurrents of war and peace in American history. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

This volume supplements the acclaimed three volume set published in 1986 and consists of an annotated listing of American Studies monographs published between 1984 and 1988. There are more than 6,000 descriptive entries in a wide range of categories: anthropology and folklore, art and architecture, history, literature, music, political science, popular culture, psychology, religion, science and technology, and sociology.

For college students and general readers, surveys the various movements advocating personal nonparticipation in war of any kind as a first step in finding nonviolent means for resolving conflict. Considers the heritage of previous centuries, conscientious objection, Catholicism and Judaism between the world wars, the antinuclear movement, and the Vietnam War. An updated and illustrated edition of Brock's 1970 Twentieth-Century Pacifism published by Van Nostrand Reinhold. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In the sequel to his much heralded The Rain and The Fire and The Will of God, Donald Wetzel continues the story of John, or Jack, and Rodney, two boys whose innocence, honor, and integrity is tested as they search a river for a lost boat and find more than they had bargained for along the way.

According to Jack Haywood, the trouble with the Hill—the farm—is that nothing ever happens there. He expects this summer, the summer of his fourteenth year, to be no different. First there is Jenny Holmes, whom he can go to see only on the pretext of seeing her brother, Les, a real pain. Jenny, who lives a mile and a half away by moonlit trail through piney woods and cypress swamp. Then there is the ’gator hole, even further from the Hill, where one can bravely swim in the secret conviction that the ’gator is a myth. There are the great summer thunderstorms, but they are to be expected. And then there is Rodney, also fourteen, down from White Plains, New York—his mother recently deceased—come to spend the summer on the Hill. But even if Jack never says so, at the summer’s end, he’ll know that much indeed has happened this summer on the Hill, much that is tender and warm—and quite real—in this story that is not so much of adolescence as it is of life itself—and of our right to hold to its celebration.