7戰敗文化：評語

 Advance Praise for The Culture of Defeat

“Wolfgang Schivelbusch here offers us an elegant work of comparative history, which probes deeply into the tense, complicated, and unpredictable responses of three cultures to the problem of military defeat and its psychology. He is nowhere predictable in his analysis and everywhere sensitive to the unexpected nuances of how men and women can extract success from failure.”

—Michael O’Brien, author of Rethinking the South and All Clever Men, Who Make Their Way

“Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan—or at least it was before Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s new book. The culture of defeat is one rarely portrayed since, as we all know, the victors write the histories. But the losers write the novels and poems, and the American South, France, and Germany produced great or at least controversial culture out of their battlefield defeats. Schivelbusch has written a brilliant, important book, especially for the United States, a nation so sure of its victories even after its defeat in Vietnam, and in the wake of the September 11 attacks.”

—Sander L. Gilman, author of Jewish Self-Hatred and Difference and Pathology

“Wolfgang Schivelbusch has written an innovative, provocative, and eloquent exploration of national trauma, mourning, and recovery. Displaying a dazzling mastery of the rich sources of high and popular culture, politics, and economics, Schivelbusch explores the surprisingly similar psychological and cultural responses of three seemingly different losers of highly charged wars. The Culture of Defeat is ambitious in its questions and comparisons, innovative in its sources and methods, and exemplary in its attention to both the national and the transnational. Each case study is full of astute analysis and wonderfully telling detail; taken together they develop a richly textured picture of the common forms and themes of cultures of defeat across national boundaries. This wonderfully original study is essential reading for anyone interested in the culture and politics of defeat in the war-filled modern world.”

—Mary Nolan, author of Visions of Modernity

“Reader, beware! For Schivelbusch’s latest—like all his earlier books, only more so—is one of those texts that’s almost impossible to skim. Every paragraph snags and holds you—holds and then dazzles with its insights and its wisdom, its surprising connections and (perhaps most astonishingly, given the book’s subject) its manifold delights. Oh hell: don’t bother bewaring. Simply surrender and exult.”

—Lawrence Weschler, author of Calamities of Exile and Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder

“Schivelbusch, always a tactical genius, has once again probed the innards of modern cultures, this time focusing, with fascinating and surprising results, on the complex and contradictory ways in which nations deal with humiliation on the battlefield.”

—William R. Taylor, author of Cavalier and Yankee

“With erudition, elegance, ease, reflective brilliance, and a consistently sharp eye for the telling or delightful quote, Schivelbusch moves through the cultural and political landscapes of three lands—the post–Civil War South, post-Sedan France, and post–World War One Germany—all in search of a surprising quarry: the shape, human feel, and surprising uses of military defeat. When you finish reading this original volume, your understanding of war itself will have changed.”

—Jonathan Schell, author of The Fate of the Earth

“With impressive virtuosity, Schivelbusch ranges widely through the cultures of three very different and complex societies to compile a remarkable analysis of the meaning of defeat. Powerfully exploring how defeat can lead to its opposite, he not only offers an array of fresh insights into the ‘lost causes’ of France, Germany, and the American South, but also offers a sober warning against the giddy joys of contemporary triumphalism.”

—Harry Watson, director, Center for the Study of the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill