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The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (American Empire Project)
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Product Description
From iPods to Starbucks to Oakley sunglasses, historian Nick Turse explores the Pentagon’s little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with the products and companies that now form the fabric of America. Turse investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon’s collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers; its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom; its joint ventures with the World Wrestling Federation and NASCAR. He shows the inventive ways the military, desperate for new recruits, now targets children and young adults, tapping into the “culture of cool” by making “friends” on MySpace.
A striking vision of this brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who need no sleep, The Complex will change our understanding of the militarization of America. We are a long way from Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex: this is the essential book for understanding its twenty-first-century progeny.
The Complex offers a unique perspective on the militarization of America. The country's needs and the Pentagon's goals have changed since Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. This is a guide to understanding its twenty-first-century progeny.
“This is a deeply disturbing audit of the Pentagon’s influence on American life, especially its subtle conscription of popular imagination and entertainment technology. If Nick Turse is right, the ‘Matrix’ may be just around the corner.”—Mike Davis, author of Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
“When President Eisenhower warned of the dangers to democracy posed by the military-industrial complex, he had no idea how far it would penetrate into every aspect of our everyday lives. In impressive detail, Nick Turse shows how the military is now tied to everything from your morning cup of Starbucks to the video games your kids play before turning in for the night. It's not just political anymore—it’s personal. Turse sounds the alarm bell about the militarization of everyday life. Now it’s up to us to do something about it.”—Bill Hartung, author of How Much Are You Making on the War Daddy?
“Nick Turse’s searing, investigative journalism reveals just how deeply embedded in our lives the war-making system is and why we should be viscerally alarmed. He exposes how, with a growing contingent of corporate/entertainment/academic/media collaborators, the Pentagon has not only garrisoned the globe, but come home to dominate the United States. For anyone interested in understanding the crisis this country is in, The Complex is indispensable reading.”—Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone
“Americans who still think they can free themselves from the clutches of the military-industrial complex need to read this book. For example, the gimmicks the Pentagon uses to deceive, entrap, and sign up gullible 18 to 24 year-olds are anything but voluntary. Nick Turse has produced a brilliant exposé of the Pentagon’s pervasive influence in our lives.”—Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
"Freelance journalist Turse hits on a fact well-known to anyone in the film and television business: The military spends lavishly in the civilian sphere, and the private sector rushes to milk whatever it can from the defense budget. In the instance of Apple, he writes, the military equipped flyers and on-the-ground tacticians with PowerBooks. Did Steve Jobs make a push to get his products, and not Bill Gates's, into the hands of the troopers? That would be a different story, but that's not the one Turse tells . . . The military has funded basic research at universities for a century; a newish development, as Turse properly points out, is that the R&D budget has mushroomed in the last few years, a byproduct of the growth of military spending in general . . . Another sort-of-new development is the Defense Department's interest in video games as training devices, which has brought many a graphic-art and game-design graduates a paycheck."—Kirkus Reviews
"In his exhaustively researched first book concerning the extent to which the 'military industrial complex' has infiltrated the life of the average American, journalist Turse starts off by documenting how many times supposedly innocent consumer choices support major Pentagon contractors, and then covers similar ground in greater detail. Turse has up-to-date information on a previously well-covered subject and casts a wide net, including the movie industry, video gaming and military recruitment tactics, in his analysis. Many of Turse's facts are purely economic, but some of them are astonishing. Who knew, for example, that in 2005, the Department of Defense spent $1.2 million on donuts in Kuwait? Or that Harvard received over $300 million in DoD funds in 2002, after being pressured, despite concerns about discrimination, to allow military recruiters access to its law school students?"—Publishers Weekly
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #73650 in Books
- Published on: 2008-03-18
- Released on: 2008-03-18
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780805078961
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In his exhaustively researched first book concerning the extent to which the "military industrial complex" has infiltrated the life of the average American, journalist Turse starts off by documenting how many times supposedly innocent consumer choices support major Pentagon contractors then covers similar ground in greater detail. Turse has up-to-date information on a previously well-covered subject and casts a wide net, including the movie industry, video gaming and military recruitment tactics in his analysis. Many of Turse's facts are purely economic, but some of them are astonishing. Who knew, for example, that in 2005, the Department of Defense spent $1.2 million on donuts in Kuwait? Or that Harvard received over $300 million in DoD funds in 2002, after being pressured, despite concerns about discrimination, to allow military recruiters access to its law school students? Though Turse offers plenty of interesting information, ultimately this book would have been more convincing if, instead of simply amassing and condensing such information, he had built a stronger argument about what it all means.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“This is a deeply disturbing audit of the Pentagon’s influence on American life, especially its subtle conscription of popular imagination and entertainment technology. If Nick Turse is right, the ‘Matrix’ may be just around the corner.”—Mike Davis, author of Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
“When President Eisenhower warned of the dangers to democracy posed by the military-industrial complex, he had no idea how far it would penetrate into every aspect of our everyday lives. In impressive detail, Nick Turse shows how the military is now tied to everything from your morning cup of Starbucks to the video games your kids play before turning in for the night. It's not just political anymore—it’s personal. Turse sounds the alarm bell about the militarization of everyday life. Now it’s up to us to do something about it.”—Bill Hartung, author of How Much Are You Making on the War Daddy?
“Nick Turse’s searing, investigative journalism reveals just how deeply embedded in our lives the war-making system is and why we should be viscerally alarmed. He exposes how, with a growing contingent of corporate/entertainment/academic/media collaborators, the Pentagon has not only garrisoned the globe, but come home to dominate the United States. For anyone interested in understanding the crisis this country is in, The Complex is indispensable reading.”—Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone
“Americans who still think they can free themselves from the clutches of the military-industrial complex need to read this book. For example, the gimmicks the Pentagon uses to deceive, entrap, and sign up gullible 18 to 24 year-olds are anything but voluntary. Nick Turse has produced a brilliant exposé of the Pentagon’s pervasive influence in our lives.”—Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
About the Author
Customer Reviews
sobering, worrisome, thoughtful and scary
This book begins with a short catalogue of the various products in your cupboard that are made by companies with huge Department of Defense contracts and continues by identifying the Navy technicians who helped design your child's computer games. In between, Nick Turse, an elegant writer, and clearly a fearsome researcher, details the ways the military has insinuated itself into all of our everyday lives -- from the products we buy, the toys our children play with to the institutions that we depend upon. It is a story that begins with President Eisenhower's famous parting words about the dangers posed by the military-industrial complex and continues through the Iraq debacle that we're now living through. This is an important book.
An important read.
An important read for all Americans. Well written, with an immense amount of details about, who, what, when and where the money goes. Obviousely a great deal of research went into this book, but it is written in such a way that you don't get bogged down in the details, they become a fluid part of a well told story. Open almost any page, and the documented, outragous spending and corruption, will stare you in the face.
Nick Turse has put together a well documented account of the DoD, tax payer funded, feeding trough, that should alarm every American. At times he shows a flair for the humorous, ( the choices are, laugh or cry )but there is nothing at all funny about this book.
A must read for all elected officials, ( and the press )who are not already well entrenched in the fleecing of America.
Even Eisenhower Didn't See This Coming
This is a fast paced compelling read. Packed with startling revelations that will horrify some, while wowing others. Nick Turse opens our eyes, as to how pervasive the Military Industrial Complex has become in our lives. He lifts the curtain on billions of dollars of Pentagon waste that Americans tolerate without question. He details for the reader the extent of how the military has garrisoned the globe.
Sounding a warning to teens that "Uncle Sam Wants You" and will do almost anything toward that end, makes this mandatory reading for young men and women as well as their parents.
Sci-fi, buffs might find cool the idea of militarized moths, or spying spiders, but the programs Dr.Turse sheds light on, are cause for grave concern.
Throughout the book the author's clever wit is apparent and the level of research admirable. If you think the Military Industrial Complex is all guns, planes, missiles and tanks you should read The Complex. If you think that we as citizens are in control of the military you must read The Complex.
