Future Of Immortalty - Softcover

Lifton, Robert J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465025986 ISBN 13: 9780465025985

Publisher: Basic Books, 1988

Synopsis

Essays discuss the psychological aspects of Hiroshima, Vietnam, the Jewish Holocaust, and the threat of nuclear war

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

One American GI who said he "felt good" immediately after killing Vietnamese civilians serves to illustrate the capacity in each of us for psychic numbing. An acquired callousness to evil and sufferingwhether the result of war, the Holocaust or the nuclear arms raceis the focus of these collected essays by the noted psychiatrist whose books include The Broken Connection and The Nazi Doctors. Lifton views Reagan's "Star Wars" plan for laser weapons in space as a denial of our total vulnerability. He criticizes "nuclearism," a dependency on, and even worship of nuclear weapons as manifested by Reagan, Edward Teller, Herman Kahn and those evangelical Christians who see nuclear annihilation as God's will. Turning to literature, he argues that Vonnegut's death-dance, Mailer's wallowing in violence and Grass's grotesqueries all tell us that our civilization is threatened. The value of these essays is that they forcefully drive home the realization that we must survive or die as a species. (February
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Lifton has assembled many of his essays published since 1965 into a coherent whole whose theme is that the future of humanity depends upon the renunciation of dependency on nuclear weapons. No mere idle spectator, Lifton spent years interviewing people who were intimately involved with the Holocaust, with nuclear testing and bombing, and with the My Lai atrocities in Vietnam. He draws together these disaster tales with eloquence and moving power. Despite his obsession with disaster, the distinguished psychiatrist is no purveyor of gloom and his work is, finally, an uplifting declaration that we who are alive today will live to see a better world. Especially worthwhile for the general reader. Sidney Gendin, Philosophy Dept., Eastern Michigan Univ., Ypsilanti
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0465025986
• ISBN 13: 9780465025985
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320