The Broken Promises Of America At Home And Abroad: An Encyclopedia For Our Times

Economic historian Douglas Dowd's latest book is truly an "encyclopedia for our times" containing some 160 entries he believes are vital to our understanding the nature of our country. Dowd has spent his long and distinguished career studying US capitalism. A system he describes not just in terms of economics but also, and more importantly, as a complex set of interacting social relations sustained by greed, racism, and militarism. The US is a rich country that could have easily provided for all its citizens' basic needs, i.e., food, shelter, healthcare, and education. Instead it became the most capitalist of all nations and in doing so, the most destructive, wasteful, and dangerous. Broken Promises is not the ranting of one who hates America; to the contrary, it contains the wit, wisdom, and insights of a man once captivated by the promise of the American Dream who continues to nurture hope that we will begin moving toward the ideals expressed in that dream.

With the sting of Bush's re-election still smarting, Broken Promises is now more than ever a necessary read. The book was written not to convince non-believers but rather to help strengthen the convictions of progressives whom Dowd hopes will feel more confident of their beliefs and empowered to work for change.

The book's introduction, written by Howard Zinn, offers a brief history about Dowd and why Zinn and others like Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, draw upon Dowd's insights. What attracts these folks to Dowd is what will hopefully attract all of us to this work: the need to learn and, perhaps more importantly, to unlearn more in order to strengthen our convictions. Maintaining ideals in these times of perpetual media spin is not an easy task and Dowd offers a helping hand with this task.

The A-Z listing of topics includes: advertising, arrogance, Bush, consumerism, crime, globalization, greed, healthcare, inequality militarism, nationalism, racism, Roosevelt, and waste. It was written to serve 'as a primer for confronting the problems of society.' Each heading provides the reader with links that connect with other related topics. For example, when you turn to affirmative action, you will encounter bolded words like racism, slavery, LBJ. These, in turn, will lead you to those sections where you will encounter additional bolded words. Dowd clearly believes that to understand one thing we need to know about a host of related items since events and social trends are interconnected and self-reinforcing. The majority of citations are drawn from mainstream conservative sources like the NY Times, Business Week and The Wall Street Journal adding additional credibility to his analysis. The format entices the reader into exploring a wide variety of topics falling under a general theme: the self-supporting forces of capitalism, militarism, racism, and greed have twisted the American Dream into a nightmare now threatening the entire world. In addition to Dowd's insight into American culture, is his wonderful ability to turn a phrase as evidenced in these excerpts.

Reagan: "Reagan was the embodiment of what increasing numbers in the USA have become or are becoming: cold hearted, substituting sentimentality for compassion; scornful or hateful of careful social analysis; but confident experts on a long list of complex social problems; quick to support wars, but unwilling to endure our casualties"

Peace: "We are simultaneously the strongest and most warlike of all nations. The always high and presently rising militarism of the USA has taken a terrible toll ... The toll is not measured only in the trillions of dollars spent and wasted, or even in the lives lost and wasted...It must also be measured by the damage done by militarism to the social framework: to our politics, our economy, our culture, our character as a people."

Dowd, now in his mid-eighties, brings to Broken Promises a rich perspective of one who has seen and experienced much of life both as an academic and social activist. He's covered much ground from his early days as a WWII pilot, to his infamous anti-war activities while holding the economics chair at Cornell in the late 60s, to his trip to North Vietnam to secure the release of American POWs, and now to his current position on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in Italy.

Broken Promises provides the reader with solid analyses and arguments that serve to remind us that what too often passes these days for common sense is in fact not good sense. To be effective politically, we need the ability to rationally analyze our history and understand the forces driving it. Growing up in post -WWII USA, we've been inoculated with a toxic mix of nationalism, militarism, and racism, making it difficult to step back and take an honest look at our country.

Broken Promises is a welcome antidote to the irrationality and spin so pervasive in America today. The afterward contains many constructive ideas about how we might begin organizing and moving toward the ideals expressed in the American Dream and, in the process, live lives that matter. It reinforces core progressive beliefs by providing well-documented analysis in a thoughtful, witty, and most of all, hopeful way. I have no doubt readers will find themselves going back to Broken Promises time and time again as they seek to understand American society and move it forward.

"The Broken Promises Of America At Home And Abroad: An Encyclopedia For Our Times, Past And Present Volumes I & II" by Douglas F. Dowd, Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2005.