War and Peace: Observations on Our Times

In more than 100 essays, written over a three-year period for The New York Observer, Howard Fast looks with horror at the official violence inflicted on Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama and Iraq and the official violence that is taking place in the cities of the United States. In War and Peace, Fast summons us to face unflinchingly the wars and the social disintegration that degraded the Reagan and Bush years, with all the explanations and excuses stripped away. He swells on the monumental folly of the Cold War and shows us repeatedly what we could have done with the billions spent on planes, bombs and guns if we had spent them on the education and safety of our children, on housing, medical care, rebuilding the cities -- and what we can still do in the future.