Steve Middendorf

“China is the major Allied belligerent whose position on the meaning of the war has shifted most thoroughly during the postwar era.”
― Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism

“Emaciate and blinking and with the wind among her rags she looked like something replevied by grim miracle from the ground and sent with tattered windings and halt corporeality into the agony of sunlight.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Outer Dark

“This book argues that a very useful concept for understanding how collective memory flows across both time and space is that of circuits of memory. This idea is distinct from Henry Rousso’s conception of “vectors” of memory, which describes institutions and entities that help transmit memory across time; the circuit transmits memory geographically, across national borders, as well as chronologically. Collective memory of war, or of any historical event, is rarely truly global. During the long postwar, several different circuits have emerged in which certain experiences, understandings, and judgments of the Second World War are shared (such as a core purpose of the war being to fight fascism), but the memories within them are distinct and self-contained. One such circuit exists in northwestern Europe and North America, another in Russia and some of its neighbors, a third in Japan, and a fourth in China.”
― Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism

“Since 1945, the United States has supported a liberal international order underpinned by a variety of international institutions intended to strengthen military and economic security. The United States has violated the liberal values underlying that order on frequent occasions, most notably in Asia and Latin America, but these same values did become norms that could then be used to criticize such behavior.”
― Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism