Please join Book Passage for a virtual talk by Norman Solomon, author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine. 

 

More than twenty years ago, 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan set into motion a hugely consequential shift in America’s foreign policy: a perpetual state of war that is almost entirely invisible to the American public. War Made Invisible, by the journalist and political analyst Norman Solomon, exposes how this happened, and what its consequences are, from military and civilian casualties to drained resources at home.

 

From Iraq through Afghanistan and Syria and on to little-known deployments in a range of countries around the globe, the United States has been at perpetual war for at least the past two decades. Yet many of these forays remain off the radar of average Americans. Compliant journalists add to the smokescreen by providing narrow coverage of military engagements and by repeating the military’s talking points. Meanwhile, the increased use of high technology, air power, and remote drones has put distance between soldiers and the civilians who die. Back at home, Solomon argues, the cloak of invisibility masks massive Pentagon budgets that receive bipartisan approval even as policy makers struggle to fund the domestic agenda.

 

Necessary, timely, and unflinching, War Made Invisible is an eloquent moral call for counting the true costs of war.

 

For several decades, independent journalist Norman Solomon has been exposing the American way of war, bringing to light crucial realities of the military-industrial complex at home and abroad. He became a prominent media critic and political analyst while one president after another took the United States into far-flung wars. His syndicated “Media Beat” column, appearing in newspapers across the country for seventeen years, reached millions of readers while challenging the routine spin and bias of mainstream media. Solomon’s book War Made Easy, published in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, won acclaim as a comprehensive tool for decoding war propaganda in the 21st century. His political analysis and commentary pieces have been published by hundreds of media outlets including the New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, Common Dreams, and Salon. He is the founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy and the national director of RootsAction.org. Solomon lives in Marin County.