War, Yesterday and Today: Jean Norton Cru's War Books from SDSU Press

An insight into the grim truths of war.

Often we see glorified, action-packed depictions of war. Soldiers bravely charging the enemy, ducking behind cover skillfully and then eliminating the enemy with nothing more than a survivable wound to the arm. Brothers in arms, plowing their way deep into enemy lines, insulting each others' mothers with clever tidbits of military jargon.

Jean Norton Cru's War Books is break from this inaccurate portrayal. It delves into the dark horrors of real war. The disturbing, traumatic experiences of real men and women on the front lines of combat are explored through a study of World War I, one of the grizzliest wars to date. He goes on to persuade the reader to hate war, and gives a litany of reasons as to why it is not the solution to any conflict.
Cru describes varied ways in which war is misconstrued to those not participating it, through media and clinically official historical accounts, neither of which do the true horror justice.

"These testimonies will teach...that if people knew what the soldier learns at his baptism of fire, nobody would consent to a solution by force of arms." --Jean Norton Cru

This piece could make an excellent addition to the collection of any sociologist, anthropologist, political scientist, or anti-war advocate. 

Any study of modern combat and its effect on the men thrust into it could also benefit from a look at this edition. Though the war discussed in therein is World War I, the themes and messages conveyed are nothing short of universal, and are highly applicable to a modern conflict.

Buy it here. Buy it now!

It’s Not Just a Sound Bite. Steinbeck’s Echo Gets Louder in "Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck’s Enduring Voice for California" (and everyone else who’s listening)

I saw the news today. Oh boy. Apparently, depending on which of our presidential candidates you ask, the economic numbers tell different tales. (By the way, the numbers show unemployment rising from 8.2% in June to 8.3% in July). According to Mitt, ever the voice of the shrinking middle class (that voice, by the way, is coming from far above), the numbers are a “hammer blow” to the nation’s workers. And no, that’s not a cool sexual reference. If you ask our current man in the white house on the hill (also a voice coming from above…he is on a hill mind you), he states that things are getting better but “we’ve still got too many folks out there looking for work.” What is causing this, you may ask each candidate? Each one says it’s the other guy.

Thanks gents. You’ve made it perfectly clear that people are still getting screwed; it’s just a matter of lubricant. I’m impressed with both of your abilities to dilute into sound bites a problem more and more people are facing.

With election rhetoric heightening and finger pointing coming to that wonderful height of US politics known as “The other guys did it,” I can’t help but consider John Steinbeck and his oeuvre. Yes, I said it: the writer’s name that in my years of teaching high school English and university survey courses generally brought sighs of forced reverence and hidden questions of relevance. However, if you look closely at what this Californian covers, in an earnest desire to discover honesty in his words (and even some painful recognition of ethnic stereotyping and dubious characterization), what you’ll find are deep and fundamental questions of identity, ethnicity, poverty, and the exploitation of the dispossessed. You could easily flip a switch and have Steinbeck writing about our nation today.

And this kind of thoughtful consideration, this honest assessment, is exactly what you will find in Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck’s Enduring Voice for California, deftly edited by Dr. William A. Nericcio and published by San Diego State University Press. From noted scholars, performers, artists, and photographers, this mélange of lectures, screenings, debates, discussions, and visual artifacts brings Steinbeck to the forefront of contemporary discussion. This “chaemera-like publication,” as Nericcio calls it in his introduction, compiles some of the most interesting moments from a Steinbeck celebration at San Diego State University in 2007. A celebration that took place right around the time the election season was ramping up before Obama’s first run at the office.

Questions about immigration, the economy, and the growing lower class (read impoverished, abused, taken advantage of) were all over the lips of politicians’ as much then as they are today. And in this volume of thoughtful analysis, creative response, and honest assessment, Steinbeck is given a modern day treatment that begs the question: has anything changed?

Nericcio’s collection is comprised of a beautiful mix of scholars, children’s writers, poets, and artists. The end result is an examination of the issues that plagued this nation in one of its worst economic and social times, that plagued it in 2007, and that sadly still plague it today. It proves that Steinbeck’s writings are an honest, if sometimes flawed, assessment of the “hammer blow” of “folks out there looking for work.” Echoes of this can still be heard today in the workers’ cries and the protestors’ chants, railing against the machine that’s running them over.

Homer from Salinas is not simply a look at Steinbeck and California’s past; it is a look at the ever-changing, and troubled, United States. This is a thoughtful work that digs Steinbeck out of the dust bowl and work camps of The Great Depression and foresees him center stage in the debates of the Occupy movement and Minuteman radicalism of today’s Great Recession. It would be a welcome novelty if our political leaders could be as relevant and honest as Steinbeck and this collection.

Buy it today from SDSU Press. High school and university classrooms cannot afford to be deprived of the thoughtful debates that this collection ignites.