Memory Culture

With vivid story-telling, extensive historical research, and on-the-ground reporting, Ghattas dispels accepted truths about a region she calls home. She explores how Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region, became mortal enemies after 1979. She shows how they used and distorted religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics. Feeding intolerance, suppressing cultural expression, and encouraging sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan, the war for cultural supremacy led to many events.

The Lost Cause and the Great War tells the stories of central Tennessee Progressive-era reformers to illustrate the fascinating broader issue of how Southerners steeped in Lost Cause Civil War mythologies simultaneously developed patriotic American fervor. Focusing on Luke Lea, a prominent politician and American army officer who attempted to capture Kaiser Wilhelm II during World War I, the book reveals the intricate interplay between three competing ideas: attachment to the memory of the Confederacy, intense American nationalism, and advocacy for progressive reforms.

Prisons and Patriots provides a detailed account of 41 Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans), known as the Tucsonians, who were imprisoned for resisting the draft during WWII. Cherstin Lyon parallels their courage as resisters with that of civil rights hero Gordon Hirabayashi, well known for his legal battle against curfew and internment, who also resisted the draft. These dual stories highlight the intrinsic relationship between the rights and the obligations of citizenship, particularly salient in times of war.

Satan Goes to the Mind Control Convention looks at the role that conspiracy theories play in American life and the current political climate. The book begins at a convention for therapists who uncover “memories” of past lives, extraterrestrials, and government mind control operations.