In riveting and revelatory detail, Aftermath documents the ways in which wars have transformed the terrain of the battlefield into landscapes of memory and enduring terror: in France, where millions of acres of farmland are cordoned off to all but a corps of demolition experts responsible for the undetonated bombs and mines of World War I that are now rising up in fields, gardens, and backyards; in a sixty-square-mile area outside Stalingrad that was a cauldron of destruction in 1941 and is today an endless field of bones; in the Nevada deserts, where America waged a hidden nuclear war against itself in the 1950's, the results of which are only now becoming apparent; in Vietnam, where a nation's effort to remove the physical detritus of war has created psychological and genetic devastation; in Kuwait, where terrifyingly sophisticated warfare was followed by the Sisyphean task of making an uninhabitable desert capable of sustaining life.Aftermath excavates our century's darkest history, revealing that the destruction of the past remains deeply, inextricably embedded in the present. Review Donovan Webster shows us that the wars of this century have left a legacy waiting to explode under our feet, or else to poison us through the air. This is a book of reportage, in the mode of the William Shawn New Yorker: detailed, vivid, well-written and well-researched, neither scholarly nor philosophic. Emotionally, it is very powerfulall the more interesting that it won the Gelber Prize. Webster takes us to France, Stalingrad, Nevada (for the nuclear bomb test sites), Vietnam, and Kuwait. An epilogue shows us the "peace dividend": the great difficulties of disposing of nuclear weapons, an army surplus that can't be sold at discount stores. Webster rightly refrains from taking sides on past wars; that would be beside his point here. One unexpected virtue of this book is in the portrayal of the peculiar work cultures that grow up on and around the remnants of wars. Gerald Owen (Books in Canada) -- Books in Canada From the Back Cover In riveting and revelatory detail, Aftermath documents the ways in which wars have transformed the terrain of the battlefield into landscapes of memory and enduring terror: in France, where millions of acres of farmland are cordoned off to all but a corps of demolition experts responsible for the undetonated bombs and mines of World War I that are now rising up in fields, gardens, and backyards; in a sixty-square-mile area outside Stalingrad that was a cauldron of destruction in 1941 and is today an endless field of bones; in the Nevada deserts, where America waged a hidden nuclear war against itself in the 1950's, the results of which are only now becoming apparent; in Vietnam, where a nation's effort to remove the physical detritus of war has created psychological and genetic devastation; in Kuwait, where terrifyingly sophisticated warfare was followed by the Sisyphean task of making an uninhabitable desert capable of sustaining life. Aftermath excavates our century's darkest history, revealing that the destruction of the past remains deeply, inextricably embedded in the present. About the Author Donovan Webster is a journalist, bestselling author, and filmmaker. A former senior editor at Outside magazine, he has written for The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. As a co-founder of the Center for International Rehabilitation and an early member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, he was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. He lives in Virginia.
