THE MARTIAL IMAGINATION:
Cultural Aspects of American Warfare

College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013
(TAMU Press) (Amazon)

Audio book available at Amazon (link)

This anthology canvasses the American war experience from the Revolution to the War on Terror, examining how it infuses legitimacy and conformity with an urgency that contorts ideas of citizenship, nationhood, gender, and other pliable categories. The multidisciplinary scholarship in this volume represents the varied perspectives of cultural history, American studies, literary criticism, war and society, media studies, and public culture analysis, illustrating the rich dialogues that epitomize the cultural history of American warfare. The contributors include Jimmy L. Bryan Jr., Timothy J. Cathcart, Amy S. Greenberg, Jonna Eagle, Susan L. Eastman, Kathleen Kennedy, John M. Kinder, Bonnie M. Miller, Jason Phillips, Belinda Linn Rincón, Jeremy K. Saucier, and James J. Schaefer.

The anthology includes my article
AGENTS OF DESTINY:
The Texas Ranger and the
Dilemma of the Conquest Narrative

War correspondents, fiction writers, poets, and artists both celebrated and condemned the violence that Texas Rangers exhibited during the U.S.-Mexican War. This ambiguity mirrored how many in the United States expressed qualms about the necessity of war to consummate their manifest destiny, but pro-expansionists used the Ranger mystique to re-situate violence and renovate savagery within new narratives that rendered these fighters as both representatively American and exotically Texan.  Download pdf at Academia.edu

Reviews

H-Net (link)
"Through these diverse studies, a few key themes emerge. First, America is marked by conflicting attitudes toward war, constituting a schizophrenic outlook that both glorifies and condemns warfare. Secondly, this work emphasizes that American martial attitudes and narratives are not formed haphazardly, but are purposefully constructed to justify, inspire, or meaningfully remember war"--Mike Hankins

Journal of American History (download pdf)
"The contributing authors have made The Martial Imagination a splendid and thought-provoking volume"--Christopher C. Lovett

Chronicles of Oklahoma (download pdf)
"an outstanding collection of thought-provoking essays . . . . a fascinating book that could be used in academic courses concerning not only military history, but also American culture in general"--Samuel C. LaSala

Journal of America's Military Past (download pdf)
"Surprisingly and perhaps most importantly, the essays in this collection continuously highlight the causes and cultural implications of America's love affair with the military and the exercise of its might"--Zachary S. Kopin

Military History of the West (download pdf)
"an extraordinarily valuable collection . . . . What is striking about this collection is the wide-ranging nature of these contributions . . . . this collection will be invaluable in a senior seminar or graduate course"--Barbara A. Gannon