I’ll be live on WBUR’s Radio Boston Monday 1 April from 3-4 PM to talk about my new book Napalm, An American Biography with host Meghna Chakrabarti. This is the US national publication date for the book, published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. You can read reviews here (“meticulously researched and vitally important,” “brilliant”) and order it from the Harvard Book Store by clicking on the picture above, or from Amazon here. This is the first comprehensive history of the weapon.
Napalm is an incendiary gel that sticks to skin and burns to the bone. It was invented at Harvard in a top-secret 1942 war research program and used in Europe, and to incinerate 64 of Japan’s largest cities in WWII. It has fought in most major military conflicts since its invention, from the Greek civil war to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Opponents of the Vietnam War, led by America’s youth, branded it a symbol of all that was wrong about that war in the 1960s. Hollywood, popular culture and politicians, in the context of America’s defeat in Indochina and the development of alternate weapons, made it the pariah weapon it is today.
WBUR has made an excellent mini website for the show. Here is a five-minute video that summarizes the book:
Here is an excerpt:
jconway says
Finally finished The Devil in the White City, while I had my issues with that book I like the genre of ‘out of the box’ histories as much as I like more conventional works like the Kearns-Goodwin and McCullough’s of the world. I wondered Bob if you’ve read Warfare State by my old professor Jim Sparrow? He is a fellow New Englander and academic and his work touches on similar themes, and I think he’d be a good person to review your book for more academic exposure. And if I still had a radio show I’d totally ask for an interview, will have to get a copy.
Bob Neer says
The book has been getting quite widely reviewed: SF Chronicle, Kirkus, BookForum, and elsewhere. You can read selections from the reviews at the Harvard University Press website. I’ve put Warfare State on my list of books to read, thanks.
ramuel-m-raagas says
Do I have to spend another thirty dollars for a good book along with the twenty or so dollars parking right below the chessmasters’ Au Bon Pain?
Bob Neer says
And if you walk to The Good Bread you won’t have to spend anything for parking.
dave-from-hvad says
as though the story of Prof. Fieser could be another chapter in yet another book on the checkered history of the collaboration of our university system with the U.S. military.
The chapter on Napalm could come just before a chapter on Prof. Ewen Cameron of McGill University and his work with the CIA in developing brainwashing and other mental torture techniques in the 1950s. These CIA techniques apparently formed the basis of our recent use of torture in Iraq.
And let’s not forget the development of the atomic bomb.
All of these things raise a lot of questions about the roles played in relatively recent history by our academic institutions and by the psychiatric and other scientific professions.
Bob Neer says
Napalm was invented in 1942 at the Converse Chemistry Laboratory at 12 Oxford Street in Cambridge, right next to the landmark Memorial Hall (which commemorates Harvard’s contribution to the Civil War). The first napalm bomb was tested on the Harvard College soccer field behind the Harvard Business School on July 4, 1942. It helped win WWII, defeating the Nazis and Japanese militarists, among other accomplishments.
goldsteingonewild says
i’ll be listening. congrats on publication.
Bob Neer says
I’ll pretend I am talking just to you.
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
but i’ve matured
mike_cote says
but I wish I could downrate it a thousand times, you homophobic tool.