Roy Scranton Libri

Since World War II, the story of the trauma hero—the noble white man psychologically wounded by his encounter with violence—has become omnipresent in America’s narratives of war, an imaginary solution to the contradictions of American political hegemony. In Total Mobilization, Roy Scranton cuts through the fog of trauma that obscures World War II, uncovering a lost history and reframing the way we talk about war today. Considering often overlooked works by James Jones, Wallace Stevens, Martha Gellhorn, and others, alongside cartoons and films, Scranton investigates the role of the hero in industrial wartime, showing how such writers struggled to make sense of problems that continue to plague us today: the limits of American power, the dangers of political polarization, and the conflicts between nationalism and liberalism. By turning our attention to the ways we make war meaningful—and by excavating the politics implicit within the myth of the traumatized hero—Total Mobilization revises the way we understand not only World War II, but all of postwar American culture.

Fire and Forget includes the title story from Redeployment by Phil Klay, 2014 National Book Award Winner in Fiction These stories aren't pretty and they aren't for the faint of heart. They are realistic, haunting and shocking. And they are all unforgettable. Television reports, movies, newspapers and blogs about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have offered images of the fighting there. But this collection offers voices—powerful voices, telling the kind of truth that only fiction can offer. What makes the collection so remarkable is that all of these stories are written by those who were there, or waited for them at home. The anthology, which features a Foreword by National Book Award winner Colum McCann, includes the best voices of the wars' generation: award-winning author Phil Klay's “Redeployment;” Brian Turner, whose poem “Hurt Locker” was the movie's inspiration; Colby Buzzell, whose book My War resonates with countless veterans; Siobhan Fallon, whose book You Know When the Men Are Gone echoes the joy and pain of the spouses left behind; Matt Gallagher, whose book Kaboom captures the hilarity and horror of the modern military experience; and ten others.

"A bleeding-edge contemporary novel that dives into the heart of Donald Trump's America. Three artists set out across the country to make a movie. There's Suzie, the jaded writer; Jim, a corporate suit-turned-video artist who survived 9/11; and a hipster videographer, Remy. They team up to make a piece of 'road movie' video/performance art about about 'freedom and democracy and starting over and making a clean break and moving forward and making America great again.' From that jumping-off point, Roy Scranton takes us on a provocative, genderqueer, shape-shifting response to our current moment. [This] is a non-linear, formally daring book about art, guns, American landscapes, American history, and American stupidity, that moves from a bleeding-edge look at our current moment to a furious, Faulknerian retelling of the Charlie Starkweather spree killings of the 1950s, capturing along the way in its fragmented, mesmerizing form, the violence that has always been near the heart of the American dream"--

An American Orwell for the age of Trump, Roy Scranton faces the unpleasant facts of our day with fierce insight and harrowing honesty. We're Doomed. Now What? penetrates to the very heart of our time.The time we've been thrown into is one of alarming and bewildering change - the breakup of the post-1945 global order, a multispecies mass extinction, and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. Not one of us is innocent, not one of us is safe. Now what?We're Doomed. Now What? addresses the crises that is our time through a series of brilliant, moving, and original essays on climate change, war, literature, and loss, from one of the most provocative and iconoclastic minds of his generation. Whether writing about sailing through the melting Arctic, preparing for Houston's next big storm, watching Star Wars, or going back to the streets of Baghdad he once patrolled as a soldier, Roy Scranton handles his subjects with the same electric, philosophical touch that he brought to his groundbreaking first book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene.

An Iraq War vet's bracing, visionary response to the challenge posed by global warming and his hope in the humanities.