Dear John
Are “Dear John” letters lethal weapons in the hands of men at war? Many US officers, servicemen, veterans, and civilians would say yes. Drawing on personal letters, oral histories, and psychiatric reports, as well as popular music and movies, Susan L. Carruthers shows how the armed forces and civilian society have attempted to weaponize romantic love in pursuit of martial ends, from World War II to today. Yet efforts to discipline feeling have frequently failed. And women have often borne the blame. This sweeping history of emotional life in wartime explores the interplay between letter writing and storytelling, breakups and breakdowns, and between imploded intimacy and boosted camaraderie. Incorporating vivid personal experiences in a lively and engaging prose – variously tragic, comic, and everything in between – this compelling study will change the way we think about wartime relationships.
C ARRUTHER S
d, g al. y s e s s e e, s s.”
Love and Loyalty in Wartime America Susan L. Carruthers
of Is d
Love and Loyalty in Wartime America
3077-5
775
SUSAN L . C ARRUTHER S
UK publication January 2022 US publication January 2022 229 x 152 x 23mm (HxWxD) 0.640kg 336 pages 9781108830775 Hardback £25.00 / $29.95 USD / $33.95 CAD
Are ‘Dear John’ letters lethal weapons in the hands of men at war? Many US officers, servicemen, veterans, and civilians would say yes. Drawing on personal letters, oral histories, and psychiatric reports, as well as popular music and movies, Susan L. Carruthers shows how the armed forces and civilian society have attempted to weaponize romantic love in pursuit of martial ends, from World War II to today. Yet efforts to discipline feeling have frequently failed. And women have often borne the blame. This sweeping history of emotional life in wartime explores the interplay between letter-writing and storytelling, breakups and breakdowns, and between imploded intimacy and boosted camaraderie. Incorporating vivid personal experiences in lively and engaging prose – variously tragic, comic, and everything in between – this compelling study will change the way we think about wartime relationships.
Susan L. Carruthers is Professor of US and International History, University of Warwick. The author of six books, including The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace, she taught for fifteen years at Rutgers University-Newark, and has held visiting fellowships at Harvard, Princeton, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. She was a finalist for the 2017 PEN Hessell-Tiltman prize.
At a glance
Advance praise
• Incorporates ongoing debates into far-ranging analysis that spans a century of US warmaking
‘..an eye-opening study of wartime romances and breakups.’
• Explores wartime relationships and breakdowns from multiple perspectives – civilian and military, male and female, historical and contemporary • Sheds new light on emotional life during wartime • Deploys a diverse range of research, using personal letters, declassified documents, press reports, psychiatric literature, movies, and popular music
Publishers Weekly ‘Dear John is, dare I say, a pleasure to read, in addition to being incisive regarding the gendering and biases built around the mythopoeia of the epistolary breakup. Carruthers’s multidimensional interrogation of the wartime brushoff encompasses fictions, reality, sexual orientation, POWs, social media, and all manner of telling the loved one So long, see you never. This learned and relevant treatment is a unique and deeply researched addition to the literature of broken hearts.’ Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
www.cambridge.org
5
