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    The Korean War: A History
    The Korean War: A History
    The Korean War: A History
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Korean War: A History

    Written by Bruce Cumings

    Narrated by David de Vries

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A bracing account of a war that lingers in our collective memory as both ambiguous and unjustly ignored.



    For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953 that has long been overshadowed by World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror. But as Bruce Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight that still haunts contemporary events. And in a very real way, although its true roots and repercussions continue to be either misunderstood, forgotten, or willfully ignored, it is the war that helped form modern America's relationship to the world.



    With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its start as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan's occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America's post–World War II occupation of Korea, the untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and the powerful militaries organized and equipped by America and the Soviet Union in that divided land. He tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, and exposes as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides and the "oceans of napalm" dropped on the North by U.S. forces in a remarkably violent war that killed as many as four million Koreans, two thirds of whom were civilians.



    In sobering detail, The Korean War chronicles a U.S. home front agitated by Joseph McCarthy, where absolutist conformity discouraged open inquiry and citizen dissent. Cumings incisively ties our current foreign policy back to Korea: an America with hundreds of permanent military bases abroad, a large standing army, and a permanent national security state at home, the ultimate result of a judicious and limited policy of containment evolving into an ongoing and seemingly endless global crusade.



    Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 19, 2019
    ISBN9781977334817

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    Reviews for The Korean War

    4.5/5

    3,747 ratings373 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a mixed bag. Some reviewers enjoyed the book, praising its different perspective on the war, thorough background history, and enjoyable narration. However, others were disappointed, finding it overrated and lacking in detail. They felt that the book focused too much on criticizing the US and did not provide enough information about key events. Overall, opinions are divided, making it difficult to recommend this title to everyone.

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This short book is hard to evaluate because it contains a lot of inside baseball/score-settling with other historians, which only serves to reinforce the author’s point that Americans know virtually nothing about the Korean War, generally misperceiving it as being about the Cold War when it was and remains primarily a civil war and the outside country of most importance is probably Japan, whose occupation set the stage for rebellion against former collaborators (who made up a big chunk of the political class of South Korea until very recently). Cumings emphasizes the atrocities committed by South Koreans and occasionally Americans, while acknowledging that North Koreans also did plenty of harm which has yet to be exposed via a truth and reconciliation commission as in the South. There are meditations on the nature of history and memory that strive for poetry, but don’t quite get there; still, I did learn something about the intractability of the conflict and the ridiculousness of seeing Korea as simply a stage on which the West-Communist Bloc struggle played out.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      An immensely frustrating book. Cumings has an important argument to make: that the Korean war is properly understood as a civil war between Koreans who collaborated with Japanese occupiers in the 1930s (and became the leaders of South Korea) and the Korean guerrillas who resisted that occupation (and became the leaders of North Korea). When the United States essentially saved South Korea, it froze in place Korea's natural evolution, keeping the civil war from resolving up to the present. In addition, Cumings argues, the United States was complicit in atrocities committed by South Korean leadership against innocent civilians in both South and North Korea, and committed atrocities of its own by carpet bombing much of North Korea with napalm and high explosives. This is an important reinterpretation (or recovery) of the history and context of the war, and I imagine there are many Americans like me for whom this is a new and valuable, if horrifying, perspective. But it deserves a much better presentation than this. The book entirely lacks a clear organization; the chapters form a series of overlapping essays, but even taken as distinct essays, they don't sum to coherent arguments. The tone of the writing lurches back and forth between staid history, personal essay, and fierce polemic. Finally, it doesn't help that Cuming's cultural touchstones are Friedrich Nietzsche and Ambrose Bierce -- both brilliant observers of human nature, but also bitter, troubled, and often making their compassion deliberately inaccessible. I'm grateful for the research Mr Cumings has assembled over his career, but this book doesn't seem the best way to encounter it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      The author acts as if Korea was the first war with atrocities... How is the dot gov Management (formerly known as a collection of bureaucracies such as Dept of War, DoD, State Dept, Executive, etc) suppose to get young conscripts to fight if they don't make the enemy a devil? ad nauseam w examples of the RoKs and US military. WTF? You put good men in bad situations to die for the staten and expect humanity when dot gov treat these young men as throw aways. Slaves that are free to dot gov. And the author goes off the reservation when he starts talking econ.. Keynes is a primitive pro state anti capitalist method of stealing the wealth of the individual and giving it to the state. What pulled Germany out of the suck back of Socialized fascist control by the ignorant US Military (army is for breaking things not for fixing things) was waiting til US Army General Clay left the premises and then smart Germans ended war socialism: funny isn't it? Young Americans go to war and die to stop Nazism and when the US gov wins over the young Americans dead bodies they maintain a national socialized system; such ignorance of Americans knows no limits; it was the Germans themselves that eliminated rationing price controls, the Germans themselves created a free market.. which is what the DAG known as US is suppose to stand for. But obviously that is a lie. And the historians continue to reproduce a story that does not fit the facts.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Sounds like a collection of random facts spit out with little relation to the sentence that came before or after.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Amazing story of Louis Zamperini's survival during WWII, especially the days adrift at sea and as a POW. But what stays in my memory was the POWs' unselfishness. They were all starving, and yet they could still share whatever food they had like an egg or even an onion.
    • 4/5
      I do not agree with the history. There ar holes in the story. Yes the sex girls were a bad thing but there SK, were complicit. He puts a bad seed on all of our heads. There were a lot of polotitions who could have done more. War is HELL EVEN WEN YOU WIN.
    • 5/5
      Heart breaking ? I never knew these things. I feel so bad about what happened especially what my country and countrymen have done...
    • 5/5
      “The same kind of inquiry is needed into American massacres such as Nogun-ri, the unrelenting firebombing of the North, and one of the most astonishing cover-ups in postwar U.S. history, the black-and-white reversal of the truth of what happened in Taejon.”(Cumings page 174)Cumings details many aspects of the Korean War, including:Nations involved (Korea, China, Japan, Russia, US, Britain)Firebombings and massacresUS napalm usePeasant uprisingsInfrastructure bombingsPolitical motivationsPerspectives of many differing points of view, and how they interactedFirsthand testimoniesI learned how the Korean War marked the beginning of the building of permanent US bases in foreign nations. These foreign occupations are what US is, and deserves all the attention Cumings gave.
    • 5/5
      I don't think I could live through a week of what this poor man went through. What a tough story of American prisoners of war in Japan during World War II. This book is a fascinating study of both human endurance and human cruelty. An important read for any lovers of history or anyone interested in a great story of what a human being can live through.
    • 4/5
      This was a good read, a different perspective on the war. Aside from the military end of the war, it goes into the political end and all the parties involved and who had what to gain and what to lose. Also gave a thorough background history about Korea and the suffering it’s people has endured. I enjoyed it and recommend.
    • 5/5
      Great history and a story that flows. The reader of the book was enjoyable to listen to.
    • 5/5
      Reason for Reading: This book dealt with many topics that interest me: World War II, especially the war with Japan, the Japanese war atrocities and survival stories, especially those at sea.What an amazing book! I would give it 10/10 if I could and two thumbs up if it were a movie. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't made into a movie either, unless telling about the relatively unknown Japanese atrocities is too much for Hollywood to handle.Louis Zamperini was a boy with humble beginnings, who grew up to have a shot at Olympic stardom, which was torn away from him by WWII and instead replaced by one of the most horrific survival stories you will ever hear. Seven years in the writing Hillenbrand has brought a book and a story that will not be forgotten by time. This is a story that everyone need read to see what despicable, horrific things human beings are capable of doing to others and how the spirit of other human beings are capable of surviving even the most degrading and self-demeaning tasks placed on top of daily torture of the most extreme kind. This book is hard to read in many places, but is also full of many moments of pathos. The POWs managed to find little ways to brighten their days at the expense of their prison keepers to help keep their morale up.Louis started life as a thief and a thug, until his older brother took his energy and placed it into something more constructive. Track. Louis was a natural, but didn't take to it kindly at first, since he easily won without trying, until he saw that with real effort he could actually break efforts and his dream for the Olympics took over and he became a changed youth, participating in the Berlin Olympics. The War came along, and the draft changed Louis's life forever. As a bombardier of a B-29 he survived a crash into the Pacific Ocean and floating aboard a life raft for a record breaking 47 days with two other crew members only to be "rescued" in the end by the Japanese. Where he then spent the rest of the war with Japan as a POW in their Geneva Convention breaking camps. As one officer is quoted as saying "This is not Geneva. This is Japan."The rags to riches story of Louis' childhood truly endears him to the reader as a character one really cares for. He is a sharp, intelligent man-youth, witty and with a sense of fun, that one cannot help but fall for him. Making his life story all that more horrific. Hillenbrand has done a good job of bringing Zamperini to life as a human being with his character strengths, quirks and flaws. The survival in the Pacific makes for absolutely riveting, unbearable and compelling reading. Hillenbrand, while writing of the POW experience, also manages to reveal some information on why the Japanese atrocities are so little known today and why their war criminals were given amnesty, while German war criminals are still hunted down to this day. (Though I believe what they presume to be the last living war criminal was extradited in just the recent past.) It certainly had nothing to do with the Japanese being any less inhumane during the war. In Hillenbrand's "Acknowledgements" she notes that the war is still a controversial topic in Japan and some of her Japanese sources asked not to be named. A MUST READ BOOK!!!
    • 5/5
      Louis Zamperini's life is told in this amazing account of his childhood, life during WW2, and post-war. Hillenbrand does a great job of telling his story and accompanying it with historic details that just adds to the story. Parts of his life are quite disturbing and will stay with me forever. However, his resilience is just incredible. One of the best non-fiction books I've ever read. A great book for for history buffs, book clubs, and for those wanting to be inspired by another man's perseverance.
    • 5/5
      I love track and field and I love American history, so I had high expectations for this book. I was not disappointed. Taking the good with the bad, Hillenbrand tells of a wild kid who found a purpose in running. Louis Zamperini made the Olympic team and had the most potential of any runner of his time. His running career was interrupted by WWII. He became a POW in Japan and suffered horrible cruelty and deprivation. He survives, but comes home to struggle with the trauma of what he had survived. Well written, interesting and hard to put down.
    • 3/5
      Don't know what all the hype was about. Glad I didn't go to see the movie.
    • 5/5
      I will read anything Laura Hillenbrand writes. She is brilliant. Louie's tale was riveting.
    • 5/5
      Incredible story of Louis Zamperini, an olympic track star and Air force lieutenant. The Air force bomber he and his crew are in crashes in the Pacific Ocean and after drifting for 30? 40? days he and 2 other crew members reach land in enemy territory.
    • 5/5
      I love history...especially with regard to WWII. This book is an incredible story of survival of a POW camp and redemption thorough God. Louie Zamperini an Olympic athlete is taken to the depths of dispare as his life spins out of control on his return home from the war. A good read.
    • 5/5
      5***** and a ❤WOW!! Louis Zamperini was a rambunctious kid and headed for trouble when his older brother Pete got him involved in track. Louie excelled at the sport, breaking records and going to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, where his performance (while not winning a medal) earned him the attention of the world. He went back to USC and continued training as a miler - many believed he would break the 4-minute mile barrier - setting his sights on the 1940 Olympic games. But war cancelled those games and Louie wound up as a bombardier in the Army Air Corps. When a plane went missing, Louie’s crew was ordered to fly an unfamiliar plane on a search and rescue mission. “The Green Hornet” was a notoriously unreliable craft and was usually parked to the side; mechanics sometimes raided it for spare parts to fix other aircraft. When an engine quit, the pilot and co-pilot did everything they could, but to no avail. The plane crashed into the Pacific, killing all but three … Louie, pilot Russell Alan “Phil” Phillips, and tail gunner Francis “Mac” McNamara. With no food and little water, they did their best to survive, managing an astonishing 47 days at sea in an inflatable raft, only to be captured by the Japanese. Their nightmare was only just beginning. The POW’s tale is harrowing, horrifying and ultimately inspirational. Hillenbrand is a master at writing nonfiction with a pace and structure that reads like a thriller. The characters are as alive to the reader as if they were sitting across the table telling their stories. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures assault the reader’s senses. I was transfixed from the beginning. I’m sure if I had been reading the traditional format I would have finished in a couple of days. Listening to the CDs on my daily commute, I found myself “going the long way,” driving around the block, and sitting in the driveway to listen to just one more track. Edward Herrmann is a fine actor and does a great job narrating this story. Unlike many audio books, he makes no effort to change his voice for the various characters; he maintains the “narrator’s” voice throughout and that is fine.I have convinced at least three of my friends to read this already. Don’t wait any longer …. Read it NOW!
    • 4/5
      The time and effort that went into the author's research must be lauded. What an amazing work. I believe that these are the kinds of books that should be read in history classes. Provide the background to a war- politics, economics, etc., then tell the stories through the true experiences of the combatants on all sides. War is fought by humans, not governments, and the generations that follow should learn the human price.
    • 2/5
      Louis Zamperini was a rambunctious youngster who discovered he could run fast. After running in the 1936 Olympics, he was on his way to a career as an athlete when war intervened. As a bombardier in the Army Air Corps, his plane was shot down over the Pacific, and with two others, he remained floating on the ocean in a raft for 47 days before landing on a Japanese island. Although drawn out too much, this part was the most interesting. However, after capture, his problems became worse. It's a story that should not be forgotten but there is no redeeming quality in relating the torture at such length. In parts, Hillenbrand suggests the concept that Americans are good, Japanese are bad (except one Japanese, a "Christian" who was good). The bias is especially noticeable in the casualty figures she quotes, statistics that say nothing about the Japanese casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all civilians. In fact she makes the claim that those bombs saved the lives of prisoners by avoiding a "kill all” order. No one can accurately say what would have happened.I kept ploughing through it but it's difficult to understand the rave reviews the book has garnered. Hillenbrand's writing is pedestrian and without the nuances of a natural storyteller. The very nature of the story was distressing, but particularly protracted description of torture. A good writer knows that this type of detail is unnecessary to get the point across. As well, Hillenbrand includes information that could not possibly be known by anyone, adding a fictional element. And although I'm glad Zamperini found some relief from his misery, the crowning annoyance was the "born again" ending, reinforcing the American (read Christian) good, Japanese bad. I do not recommend this to anyone.
    • 5/5
      Being unfamiliar with the Pacific theater of WWII, I chose the biography of Louis Zamperini to learn the terrain.The book is subtitled "A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption"and it is one of the most thought provoking and touching stories I've ever read.---------An update of Louis would includeOn April 24, 2011, Zamperini received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters from Azusa Pacific University. The following month, on May 20, 2011, Zamperini delivered Bryant University's 2011 baccalaureate address and received Bryant's inaugural Distinguished Character Award. The following day, May 21, Bryant presented Zamperini with an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters. The next day he threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Red Sox-Cubs game at Fenway Park in Boston.----------It was such an incredible tale of survival.I was cheering when the redemptive factors came into play.What a great read.5* and fav
    • 2/5
      This is not a survey of said conflict and is such an unusual choice for the Modern Library Nonfiction catalogue. Cumings asserts that for myriad reasons the Korean War drifted out of collective consciousness. The American stewards of the War (Acheson MacArthur) never understood the origins and prosecuted it in a heavy handed way which only exacerbated antipathy between North and South. The author asserts that the war can only be understood in the context that Japan made Korea a colony in the early 20C and that the ruling elite of the South collaborated with the Nipponese until the end of WWII. The propaganda of the time (racist Orientalism) used the grievance of Koreans invading Korea as it is moral compass. This was followed by the subsequent US/UN invasion of the North -- which isn't viewed as egregious. Then the Chinese came roaring across the Yalu and it became rather cold outside. Unfortunately this book launches asides at other books on the conflict, books I have lined up to read over the next couple days.
    • 5/5
      Excellent -- so glad I read the book before the movie. I am so grateful for the men and women who gave their lives for freedom during World War II.
    • 1/5
      Way over rated book, super disappointed, I couldn’t even finish. It started off interesting but then went into the nth level of detail of how the U.S did bad things and philosophical discussion on why war crimes are committed. The author then spent time telling us how the North wasn’t that bad. Telling how the U.S did bad things is fine BUT at least tell us the details of the war, Battle of Chosin, story around MacArthur getting fired. There is a ton that is just barely touched. Not worth listening too, skip this book.
    • 3/5
      Very much enjoyed most of the book I found I was pretty well engaged throughout most of the book but once the war was over and I listened for several more hours about the aftermath - particularly the Billy Graham portions - I found my interest nearly non-existent.

      Truly what these men went through was harrowing and it would have been impossible for any of them to have even a glimmer of a peaceful recovery.

      The writing was good, as one would expect from this author, but there were many things that were repeated and, after a while, I felt like the book was overly long.

      Overall, I'm happy I read it and my interest in all things WWII has been rekindled.

      I'd go 3.5
    • 4/5
      Detailed story about a man with an amazing life. Not my kind of book, and I wouldn't have read it if it hadn't been for my book club, but I'm glad to have finished it. Can't believe how some people can overcome anything put in their path.
    • 4/5
      Great story of Olympic athlete,Louis Zamperini, who survived over a month at sea after his B-24 crashed in the Pacific during WWII and then survived horrific POW experiences on an island and in Japan up until the war ended. Best part is toward the end where he gets forgiveness in his heart through a Christian conversion, which the movie totally skips. I read the same basic story in a biography two or three years ago (Devil at My Heels), but this one's better.
    • 5/5
      What an astonishing book Laura Hillenbrand has written, about the experiences of a world-class American runner who winds up in a Japanese POW camp during World War II. Louie Zamperini was a wild boy growing up in early 20th-century California until he discovered his talent for running. He channeled his energies into reaching ever-higher athletic goals, including competing (though not winning) at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Louie is training for the 1940 Olympics when World War II breaks out; he joins the Army Air Corps and eventually is sent to the Pacific theater after Pearl Harbor. He survives a number of harrowing close calls, but when his bomber crashes into the Pacific with only himself and two other men surviving on a life raft, it seems his luck has finally run out. What follows is an unbelievable story of survival — survival for weeks at sea, survival in a series of Japanese POW camps, and survival over the demons that haunt him even after he returns home. An unforgettable story about an unforgettable man.
    • 3/5
      This book tells the story of Louis Zamperini, from his childhood to his Olympic running to his WWII service to his post-war life. I appreciated his numerous and varied accomplishments, his heroism and his survival story; however, I found it very reliant on memory and wonder how many of Louie's personal anecdotes could be independently corroborated. I also wish it had included more insight into his psyche and state of mind that enabled him to survive such extreme cruelty. This book is not for everyone, as it contains repetitive graphic violence at the hands of a sadistic sociopath.