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itschlve's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Compelling read about the role of the USA and American imperialism in Korea and how they forever changed the destiny of the peninsula after WW2.
The elements surrounding memory, the remembrance or incapacity to do so, the orientalist views of Korea from the Americans and the West were crucial and very interesting.
Highly recommend this book to people wanting to know more about a war and a conflict that is not over, therefore cannot be forgotten as it is still alive. Even more in the light of the current Camp David summit with Yoon, Biden and Kishida.
The elements surrounding memory, the remembrance or incapacity to do so, the orientalist views of Korea from the Americans and the West were crucial and very interesting.
Highly recommend this book to people wanting to know more about a war and a conflict that is not over, therefore cannot be forgotten as it is still alive. Even more in the light of the current Camp David summit with Yoon, Biden and Kishida.
achillleez's review against another edition
5.0
rating 5 stars because i would recommend this book to everyone (but mainly americans). a completely different look at the korean war than is usually told tracing the beginnings to japanese colonialism and the war in the pacific.
anti_formalist12's review against another edition
3.0
This book is many things, few of them well thought out or properly explained. It is a brief history of Korea under Japanese imperialism, a history of American politics under McCarthyism, a literary study of some war literature, and an attack on the historiography of the Korean War. But it's not really a history of the Korean War. Cumings says all he wants about the war in the first forty pages, then he lapses into thoughts on Nietzsche, memory, and the nature of reconciliation. He spends close to two pages attacking David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter, largely for the sin of omitting many Koreans, but Cumings hardly ever discusses the PLA and their contributions to the war. Peng Dehuai, the revolutionary general that had fought the Nationalists, the Japanese, and then led one million Chinese "Volunteers" into Korea in order to push American, British, and ROK forces back to the South does not even merit mention. He spends a good deal of time speculating about the nature of the North Korean aims and plans during the war, which are difficult to verify considering the nature of modern North Korea, but he glides by China as if their contribution to the war only merited an offhand remark. What's more, Cumings refutes some of aspects of the history surrounding the Korean War, but he never really explains what he is refuting. Early in the book he mentions that the plan to push the North Koreans to the Chinese border came from the White House. He's refuting the fact that MacArthur has been seen as the main culprit in this aggressive campaign, but he never explains that that is what he is refuting. Cumings just assumes the reader will know that. Not only is this book not a good starting point for the Korean War, it's not even a good history of the reader has any background in the war.
gregbrown's review against another edition
5.0
Outstanding. Cumings mostly dispenses with a military accounting of the war's battles and fronts, instead focusing on how the war came to be and how it still persists today. He delivers a thoughtful excavation of Korean history, and how US interests collided and were in turn changed by the conflict. The last book I'll read in 2022 and easily one of my favorites.
marcelozanca's review
3.0
a lot of before and after, but very little of the war per se. Choquing to know how violent were behind the lines and not only during the war.