The Good Die Young - by Bhaskar Sunkara & Rene Rojas & Jonah Walter (Paperback)

About the Book

"If the American foreign policy establishment is a grand citadel, Henry Kissinger is the specter haunting its dusty hallways. For half a century, he was an omnipresent figure in war rooms and at press briefings, dutifully shepherding the American empire through successive attempts at expansion. For multiple generations of antiwar activists, Kissinger personified the depravity of the US war machine. The Good Die Young assesses a career too frequently applauded in essays from respected scholars and journalists such as Gerald Horne, Carolyn Eisenberg, and Chip Gibbons, with an introduction from Bancroft Prize-winner Greg Grandin. The world Kissinger wrought is one we live in today, where ideal investment conditions are generated from the barrel of a gun. Today, global capitalism and United States hegemony are underwritten by the most powerful military ever devised. Any political vision worth fighting for must promise an end to the cycle of never-ending wars afflicting the world in the twenty-first century. Breaking that cycle means placing the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism in our crosshairs. The book follows Kissinger's fiery trajectory across the globe, covering Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. More than any other public figure, the life and career of this man illustrate the links between capitalism, empire, and the feedback loop of endless conflict that plagues us today"--

Book Synopsis

"The collection strikes a blackly comic but erudite tone."
-Sophia Nguyen, The Washington Post

Kissinger is dead but his blood-soaked legacy endures

If the American foreign policy establishment is a grand citadel, then Henry Kissinger is the ghoul haunting its hallways. For half a century, he was an omnipresent figure in war rooms and at press briefings, dutifully shepherding the American empire through successive rounds of growing pains. For multiple generations of anti-war activists, Kissinger personified the depravity of the American war machine.

The world Kissinger wrought is the world we live in, where ideal investment conditions are generated from the barrel of a gun. Today, global capitalism and United States hegemony are underwritten by the most powerful military ever devised. Any political vision worth fighting for must promise an end to the cycle of never-ending wars afflicting the world in the twenty-first century. And breaking that cycle means placing the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism in our crosshairs.

In this book, Jacobin follows Kissinger's fiery trajectory around the world -- not because he was evil incarnate, but because he, more than any other public figure, illustrates the links between capitalism, empire, and the feedback loop of endless war-making that still plagues us today.

Review Quotes

"Among all this catharsis, no one could surpass the 'unbeatable levels of hater' reached by the lefty publishers Jacobin magazine and Verso Books...[The Good Die Young] features essays by celebrated scholars like Gerald Horne and Carolyn Eisenberg on the wide-spanning breadth of Kissinger's noxious foreign-policy legacy and the areas of the world still hurting thanks to his time in power."
--Nitish Pahwa, Slate

"The collection strikes a blackly comic but erudite tone, opening with an introduction by Yale professor Greg Grandin that explores how Kissinger's intellectual and professional trajectory unfolded across presidential administrations and in parallel with American power at large."
--Sophia Nguyen, The Washington Post

About the Author

René Rojas is a sociologist studying neoliberalism in the Southern Cone. Originally from Chile, he received his PhD from New York University in 2016.

Bhaskar Sunkara is the founder and Editor of Jacobin, which he launched in 2010 as an undergraduate at George Washington University. He has written for the New York Times, Le Monde, the Guardian, Vice, and the Washington Post. Sunkara is also the publisher of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and the UK-based Tribune. He lives in New York.

Jonah Walters is a researcher at Jacobin and a doctoral student in geography at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York University and a Nation editorial board member, is the author of a number of prize-winning books, including The Empire of Necessity, which won the Bancroft Prize; Fordlandia, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Empire's Workshop; The Last Colonial Massacre; The Blood of Guatemala; and Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman.