Overview

"Revisiting the racial origins of the conflict between """"civilization"""" and """"savagery"""" in twentieth-century America The atomic age brought the Bomb and spawned stories of nuclear apocalypse to remind us of impending doom. As Patrick Sharp reveals, those stories had their origins well before Hiroshima, reaching back to Charles Darwin and America's frontier. In Savage Perils, Sharp examines the racial underpinnings of American culture, from the early industrial age to the Cold War. He explores the influence of Darwinism, frontier nostalgia, and literary modernism on the history and representations of nuclear weaponry. Taking into account such factors as anthropological race theory and Asian immigration, he charts the origins of a worldview that continues to shape our culture and politics. Sharp dissects Darwin's arguments regarding the struggle between """"civilization"""" and """"savagery,"""" theories that fueled future-war stories ending in Anglo dominance in Britain and influenced Turnerian visions of the frontier in America. Citing George W. Bush's """"Axis of Evil,"""" Sharp argues that many Americans still believe in the racially charged opposition between civilization and savagery, and consider the possibility of nonwhite """"savages"""" gaining control of technology the biggest threat in the """"war on terror."""" His insightful book shows us that this conflict is but the latest installment in an ongoing saga that has been at the heart of American identity from the beginning - and that understanding it is essential if we are to eradicate racist mythologies from American life."

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9780806143064

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An important, insightful, and timely study. --Richard Slotkin, author of Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century

The myth of automatic progress is the unthinking basic narrative told by the authors of all American history textbooks. Savage Perils shows how this storyline developed from Darwin, explains how it came to dwell in Cold War science fiction, illuminates how it reinforces Western racism, and warns us where it might take us next. - James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong An important, insightful, and timely study. - Richard Slotkin, author of Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century

An important, insightful, and timely study. --Richard Slotkin, author of Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century <br>

-An important, insightful, and timely study.---Richard Slotkin, author of Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century

An important, insightful, and timely study. --Richard Slotkin, author of Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century The myth of automatic progress is the unthinking basic narrative told by the authors of all American history textbooks. Savage Perils shows how this storyline developed from Darwin, explains how it came to dwell in Cold War science fiction, illuminates how it reinforces Western racism, and warns us where it might take us next. --James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Author Information

Patrick B. Sharp is Assistant Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Liberal Studies at California State University, Los Angeles.

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