In this inventive meditation on war, time, and the law, Mary Dudziak argues that wartime is not as discrete a time period as we like to think. Instead, America has been engaged in some form of ongoing overseas armed conflict for over a century. Meanwhile policy makers and the American public continue to view wars as exceptional events that eventually give way to normal peace times.

"Mary Dudziak's new book, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences, is a crucial document. Her smooth foray into legal and political history reveals that in not just the past decade but the past century, wartime has become a more or less permanent feature of the American experience, though we fail to recognize it " --The Nation

"A thoughtful and original take on the concept of war." --Foreign Affairs

 "Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Mary Dudziak's book makes a spectacularly illuminating contribution to a subject traditionally neglected--the linkage between race relations and foreign policy: neither African-American history nor diplomatic history will be the same again."--Gerald Horne, author of Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois

"This book is a tour de force."
--Elaine Tyler May, author of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

"Groundbreaking."--American Lawyer

"In this gem of a book, Mary Dudziak brings vividly to life the important but little known history of Thurgood Marshall's intense involvement with Kenya during its journey toward independence in the 1960s. This great champion of the American civil rights struggle never relinquished his hope that democracy and equality would one day flourish in Kenya, even as he became painfully aware of the obstacles that stood in the path of this dream. A powerful and poignant story, beautifully told."--Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University and author of American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century

“Insightful and important.”

– Henry Richardson, Law and History Review

September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment?

• “I am exhilarated by the collective wisdom, creativity, and insight of this unusual yet riveting distillation of perspectives on September 11.”—Bruce Lawrence, author of Shattering the Myth: Islam beyond Violence

Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders (co-edited with Leti Volpp)

• "By weaving together colorful and contentious strands of culture, history and law, these essays make a compelling argument that "it is in its bleeding borders that law itself, and with it American identity, is constructed, contested, and made meaningful." Harvard Law Review

Gary R. Hess Lecture in Policy History

228 Bowen-Thompson Student Union

Bowling Green State University

Monday, October 22, 2018

4:00 pm