This Is Not Who We Are: America’s Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue

by Zachary Shore

What kind of country is America? Zachary Shore tackles this polarizing question by spotlighting some of the most morally muddled matters of WWII. Should Japanese Americans be moved from the west coast to prevent sabotage? Should the German people be made to starve as punishment for launching the war? Should America drop atomic bombs to break Japan's will to fight? Surprisingly, despite wartime anger, most Americans and key officials favored mercy over revenge, yet a minority managed to push their punitive policies through. After the war, by feeding the hungry, rebuilding Western Europe and Japan, and airlifting supplies to a blockaded Berlin, America strove to restore the country's humanity, transforming its image in the eyes of the world. A compelling story of the struggle over racism and revenge, This Is Not Who We Are asks crucial questions about the nation's most agonizing divides.

348 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Zachary Shore is Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of European Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He previously served on the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State through an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also worked as a National Security Fellow at Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington, DC.

Shore earned his doctorate in modern European history from St. Antony's College, Oxford, and has lived for more than six years in Europe, traveling for extended periods across the continent, including Germany, Russia, and the Balkans. His academic honors include winning Harvard's Derek Bok Teaching Award, Oxford's St. Antony's Book Prize, a Dupont Fellowship, an Idea Prize from Germany's Kõrber Foundation, and research grants from the Fulbright Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Earhart Foundation, Daimler-Chrysler Foundation, Robert Bosch Foundation, and the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain. He has appeared on National Public Radio, Dialogue, and other media outlets.

Shore’s articles and editorials on foreign policy have appeared in The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, Newsday, Haaretz, The National Interest, Orbis, The Journal of Contemporary History, and Intelligence and National Security. His books have been reviewed and profiled in Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, Washington Monthly, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New Republic On-line.

Reviews

[Gustavo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and easy to read in spite of the difficult subject it covers (per the subtitle: vengeance vs virtue) all in a very balanced manner.

When I closed the book I came away with a revised and more humane view of President Herbert Hoover.

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this odd for me because the author is speaking mainly about WWII and the internment of Japanese Americans and also dropping the A-Bomb. Both are horrific or were. Yet the fire bonding of Japan and Germany destroyed and killed more civilians. The bomb being dropped was out of necessity for Japan would not surrender the author may not know this but my father who had fought with 82 Airbourne during WWII was with hundreds of men ready to board planes to fly to Japan when they were told to wait and later told Japan had surrendered. He was still young for having to fudge his age went in at 17 and had been fighting for over a year almost two and would still be fighting longer.
As for his other claims, he does not take into account that Native Americans have been put into reservations for hundreds of years and then moved and treaties broken when either gold was discovered, or land was taken to build dams during the 50’s even just a few years ago a pipeline business and the government said had to be built through the Indian reservation and through there water supply yet when the pipeline had a break we hear nothing. So yes we as a Government have always been like this from the railroads taking land so they could go across the country to Polk starting a war with Mexico to have more land in the Pacific which was also about railroads. Hell for that matter back in WWII the fishermen mostly Italian had all of their boats confiscated by the coast guard never to have gotten them back or compensation and even Dimaggio’s family’s fishing boats as well, their lively hood was cut and had to come up with a different way to survive. No one talks about that unless you were an older Italian the Government has been doing what they want when they want since the formation of our government and to think differently is a fantasy, and so is his wanting me to think differently, I will not. For others though reading this book maybe I am getting something totally wrong from it. I received this book from Netgalley.com

[Hana Correa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a very busy schedule so this took an embarrassing amount of time for me to finish. That shouldn’t take anything away from the book. I found this book fascinating. I love history in all forms and while this book covers WW11 era America, a time that has received a lot of attention, this book goes behind the scenes of some of America’s biggest policy decisions at the time and picks apart the many players and the levers they were pulling on at the time. This book is full of little known information about people that may be household names. For example, everyone today is familiar with Herbert Hoover and the catastrophic financial downturn the proceeded WW11, but I never knew he was also a committed humanitarian who having lost the presidency to FDR, went back to work in the Truman administration trying to prevent the entire European continent from starving following the devastation of WW11. There is a heavy focus on the Japanese internment and the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, perhaps too narrow considering the title, but the great deeds and misdeeds of the US Government could perhaps take up many volumes so maybe a slender focus is a good thing. Thank you Netgalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.