Zillah Eisenstein grew up against the background of the civil rights movement in the USA. The daughter of communist, atheist, Jewish parents, her worldview has been shaped by this unusual background of politics. She writes: I have never known God as an explanation for what people do, or for what happens to them. I was brought up to believe in people: that people make the world through their...

In this book, Zillah Eisenstein continues her unforgiving critique of United States from the point of view of a US citizen. She charts its most recent forays into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the violations at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. She argues that these share much with the domestic problems of the 2004 US Presidential election, and Hurricane Katrina. She warns that women’s...

One day at a beach Kathleen Barry witnessed an accidental death. Seeing how empathy drew together the bystanders - strangers until that moment - in shared human consciousness, she asked: "Why do we value human lives in everyday moments but accept the killing in war as inevitable ?"

In Unmaking War, Remaking Men, Kathleen Barry explores soldiers' experiences through a politics of empathy. By...