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Rating: 
Summary: Not An Unbiased Viewpoint of the Military
Review: Although the subject matter is keenly interesting, it is clear that Lutz is not an objective voice. Some of what she writes is correct, and the economic relationship of Fayetteville/Fort Bragg as well as her racial examples are right on. However, I wished for a more unbiased voice, one that did not sound so vehemently and obviously anti-War. We've got the left, we've got the right, how about a balanced view of our history for once? As well, I craved more concrete citations (i.e. pg 104, "psy-ops were deployed in '64 in a joint Cumberland County-Ft. Bragg attempt to increase traffic safety")According to my retired Special Forces Sgt. Major spouse, it is illegal to use psy-ops on civilians in the United States. I'd like to see a direct reference to this declaration of Lutz'... As well, many of her arguments were chronically non-sequitur--they didn't add up. The last paragraph on 100 infers that Special Forces soldiers attracted criminal drug toting elements to Fayetteville, with nothing to back up her argument but heresay. Another quote from one of her witnesses: "...we had this big round up of people with drugs, and I can almost bet that the guys picked up were in the army at some point in time". Definitive word, here, folks, is ALMOST. But the same paragraph mentions Special Forces as being magnets drawing the unsavory criminal types to the area. This association in this particular paragraph (and in many others throughout the book) is unfair to soldiers in general and SF in particular, and unprofessional writing practice. The publication lost much credibility in my eyes. The editing lacked some grace, too, and I won't get into it here, except to say that there were run-on sentences that required several readings to decipher what it was she was trying to say, as well as fragments, all lending to my overall feeling of mediocrity. All in all, some interesting points, some questionable, and as a reader, I found more to question about this book than not. Read at your own risk. (And lest anyone reading this review think I'm a conservative republican who loves war, Dubya, and the military, I'm a registered, hard-line democrat and am considered one of those dangerous, eco-liberal types.)
Rating: 
Summary: an exploration of violence normalized
Review: Given the renewed patriotism in the U.S., this book gives us much to think about. Catherine Lutz studies the impact of the military on the small community of Fayetteville. And she also describes the military's pervasive effect on the larger community of the U.S. Her thorough research, illuminating explanations and salient examples make for compelling reading and deeper understanding of our reaction to 9-11. Homefront inspires us to think of alternatives other than war.
Rating:
Summary: Understanding America
Review: This is an eye-opening, honest, and thoughtful examination of the role the military plays in our society. It is obvious that Lutz has thoroughly and carefully studied Fayetteville, NC, and she has delivered a powerfully written document of the effects an army base has had on the community. What makes this a brilliant work is that it invites the reader to consider the many arenas of our culture which have been influenced, even created, by the military complex we have embraced as our defense. Homefront is an extremely important book.
Rating:
Summary: Removing the Wool from our Eyes
Review: This is an eye-opening, honest, and thoughtful examination of the role the military plays in our society. It is obvious that Lutz has thoroughly and carefully studied Fayetteville, NC, and she has delivered a powerfully written document of the effects an army base has had on the community. What makes this a brilliant work is that it invites the reader to consider the many arenas of our culture which have been influenced, even created, by the military complex we have embraced as our defense. Homefront is an extremely important book.
Rating:
Summary: Not An Unbiased Viewpoint of the Military
Review: While President Eisenhower warned about the Military Industrial Complex in the United States, one could argue that what is more troubling is the military cultural complexion of the United States. Catherine Lutz makes this argument forcibly in Homefront: A Military City and the American 2oth Century.
Lutz uses Fayetteville, North Carolina as a microcosm to examine the quotidian and epochal influences arising from America's military in times or war and peace. Homefront is the result of intensive data collection and wide ranging interviews. Lutz masterfully combines the two to tell a story of the city and its people that are always interconnected with the ever-widening influence of the U.S. military in the past century.6.
Using the prisms of race, class, and gender, Lutz deconstructs the image of the military as the defender of the American Way. She inverts the paradigm to show that often the presence of the military reinforces existing divisions. Fayetteville is an army town. Throughout the last century it was also a town that experienced Jim Crow, increased domestic violence, hate crimes, and a widening gap between the haves and the underclass. Lutz also documents that the spit-shine image of the Army often camouflages environmental degradation resulting from base operations. Homefront tells the story of the costs-both quantifiable and hidden-to the United States of becoming and remaining the planet's only superpower.
Lutz sets each of her six chapters within an identifiable era for Fayetteville and the U.S. military. The book begins with the opening of Fort Bragg in 1918. This period is, as David Blight argues in Race and Reunion, formed by the previous half century of American mythmaking that raises both the soldier and the South to places of honor in the national psyche. Homefront details how the perception of heroism often conflicts with the local experience of oppression. As Lutz herself writes, when recounting the history of former slave John Nichols-who refused to leave the land that was to become Fort Bragg, "[T]his story is structured around the time's stereotypes." Indeed, throughout the book the presence of the Army is often described by Fayetteville's residents in archetypal terms.
Lutz calls Fayetteville a company town. Because the army is the base for economic activity, the long-time residents of Fayetteville both love and fear it. Lutz describes how already well-off whites have reaped great wealth from the development that Fort Bragg created. She also describes how the city's inability to broaden its industrial base has left poor whites and most blacks working retail jobs with some of the lowest pay scales in North Carolina. In addition, the presence of thousands of young men has created another economy-where sex is the commodity. Sex workers represent the underside of the military culture that envelops a military town. Homefront is direct in examining that underside.
Lutz's voice is clear throughout the book (even when examining the negative effects of World War II-"the good war"). And her critique resonates strongly in the current climate. As Lutz states several places in her book, a military definition of the situation is essential to the military project. The military and its supporters thrive on an us versus them paradigm. Most of the public embraces this paradigm.
Two letters to the editor in the August 28, 2002 Wall Street Journal excoriated the subject of a story who resisted operations at a nearby military base because he thought the base was a detriment to his neighborhood. One letter-writer accused the subject of being more concerned with his lifestyle than his fellow countrymen's security. A letter published in the September 1, 2002 Raleigh News and Observer went even further. In response to someone who questioned the presence of the Junior ROTC on a local high school campus, the letter writer commented: "What's wrong with our children having the same values as, say, George Washington . . . Ulysses S. Grant . . . or Dwight D. Eisenhower." Lutz warns that such conflating of all things military with heroism and leadership is exactly the problem with the cultural complexion that looks back at most Americans in our national mirror. And though Lutz book was finished before 9-11, her research helps explain much of the reaction and rhetoric that has met anyone who questions our current policy in the war on terror or toward removing Saddam Hussein.
My own critiques of Lutz's book are mainly on two fronts. First, her work seems to intentionally avoid the role of religion in Fayetteville and in the broader national discussion. Early on she quotes a minister who states in 1923: "It is a pleasure to record that the relationship between the church and the government as represented in the authorities at Fort Bragg has been most cordial." But aside from the arrival of a Quaker House during the Vietnam years, Lutz does not detail the ebb and flow of the relationship. It seems a dramatic lacuna. The relationship of religion to the military, especially in the South, was pivotal during much of the 20th Century. In fact, I remember that Fayetteville was a regular venue for evangelical gatherings-often Billy Graham-in the 60s and 70s.
Second, the scope of Lutz's work occasionally confuses issues. Because she is focusing on both individual anecdotal evidence and metalanguage, the arguments do not always match. For instance, her work in Fayetteville convinces her that "civilian is the majority, dominant category," but there is "widespread acceptance of a military definition of the situation." For those of us accustomed to identifying the dominant category by determining who has the power to define the situation, these two explanations seem mutually exclusive.
However, my complaints pale in comparison to my admiration. Catherine Lutz has given me-and I believe this will be true for all readers-a new prism through which to view our national military culture. In Fayetteville and throughout the United States, we have met the enemy and they are us.
Rating: 
Summary: Fayetteville writ large
Review: While President Eisenhower warned about the Military Industrial Complex in the United States, one could argue that what is more troubling is the military cultural complexion of the United States. Catherine Lutz makes this argument forcibly in Homefront: A Military City and the American 2oth Century.
Lutz uses Fayetteville, North Carolina as a microcosm to examine the quotidian and epochal influences arising from America's military in times or war and peace. Homefront is the result of intensive data collection and wide ranging interviews. Lutz masterfully combines the two to tell a story of the city and its people that are always interconnected with the ever-widening influence of the U.S. military in the past century.6.
Using the prisms of race, class, and gender, Lutz deconstructs the image of the military as the defender of the American Way. She inverts the paradigm to show that often the presence of the military reinforces existing divisions. Fayetteville is an army town. Throughout the last century it was also a town that experienced Jim Crow, increased domestic violence, hate crimes, and a widening gap between the haves and the underclass. Lutz also documents that the spit-shine image of the Army often camouflages environmental degradation resulting from base operations. Homefront tells the story of the costs-both quantifiable and hidden-to the United States of becoming and remaining the planet's only superpower.
Lutz sets each of her six chapters within an identifiable era for Fayetteville and the U.S. military. The book begins with the opening of Fort Bragg in 1918. This period is, as David Blight argues in Race and Reunion, formed by the previous half century of American mythmaking that raises both the soldier and the South to places of honor in the national psyche. Homefront details how the perception of heroism often conflicts with the local experience of oppression. As Lutz herself writes, when recounting the history of former slave John Nichols-who refused to leave the land that was to become Fort Bragg, "[T]his story is structured around the time's stereotypes." Indeed, throughout the book the presence of the Army is often described by Fayetteville's residents in archetypal terms.
Lutz calls Fayetteville a company town. Because the army is the base for economic activity, the long-time residents of Fayetteville both love and fear it. Lutz describes how already well-off whites have reaped great wealth from the development that Fort Bragg created. She also describes how the city's inability to broaden its industrial base has left poor whites and most blacks working retail jobs with some of the lowest pay scales in North Carolina. In addition, the presence of thousands of young men has created another economy-where sex is the commodity. Sex workers represent the underside of the military culture that envelops a military town. Homefront is direct in examining that underside.
Lutz's voice is clear throughout the book (even when examining the negative effects of World War II-"the good war"). And her critique resonates strongly in the current climate. As Lutz states several places in her book, a military definition of the situation is essential to the military project. The military and its supporters thrive on an us versus them paradigm. Most of the public embraces this paradigm.
Two letters to the editor in the August 28, 2002 Wall Street Journal excoriated the subject of a story who resisted operations at a nearby military base because he thought the base was a detriment to his neighborhood. One letter-writer accused the subject of being more concerned with his lifestyle than his fellow countrymen's security. A letter published in the September 1, 2002 Raleigh News and Observer went even further. In response to someone who questioned the presence of the Junior ROTC on a local high school campus, the letter writer commented: "What's wrong with our children having the same values as, say, George Washington . . . Ulysses S. Grant . . . or Dwight D. Eisenhower." Lutz warns that such conflating of all things military with heroism and leadership is exactly the problem with the cultural complexion that looks back at most Americans in our national mirror. And though Lutz book was finished before 9-11, her research helps explain much of the reaction and rhetoric that has met anyone who questions our current policy in the war on terror or toward removing Saddam Hussein.
My own critiques of Lutz's book are mainly on two fronts. First, her work seems to intentionally avoid the role of religion in Fayetteville and in the broader national discussion. Early on she quotes a minister who states in 1923: "It is a pleasure to record that the relationship between the church and the government as represented in the authorities at Fort Bragg has been most cordial." But aside from the arrival of a Quaker House during the Vietnam years, Lutz does not detail the ebb and flow of the relationship. It seems a dramatic lacuna. The relationship of religion to the military, especially in the South, was pivotal during much of the 20th Century. In fact, I remember that Fayetteville was a regular venue for evangelical gatherings-often Billy Graham-in the 60s and 70s.
Second, the scope of Lutz's work occasionally confuses issues. Because she is focusing on both individual anecdotal evidence and metalanguage, the arguments do not always match. For instance, her work in Fayetteville convinces her that "civilian is the majority, dominant category," but there is "widespread acceptance of a military definition of the situation." For those of us accustomed to identifying the dominant category by determining who has the power to define the situation, these two explanations seem mutually exclusive.
However, my complaints pale in comparison to my admiration. Catherine Lutz has given me-and I believe this will be true for all readers-a new prism through which to view our national military culture. In Fayetteville and throughout the United States, we have met the enemy and they are us.
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