"Extraordinarily lucid on complex themes . . . A slim, distilled work [that] offers a splendidly readable synoptic introduction to the comparative and interdisciplinary work of [the Historial de la Grande Guerre]."—Hew Strachan, Foreign Affairs

"This book will raise screams from what we pretend to be the 'farmer community,' but those screams will be from corporate welfare recipients, not real gardeners and farmers. Manning's indictment is so well researched, provocative, and damning that it makes us feel moral conflict every time we place a processed food product in our mouths. This conflictedness can only improve our health and lives."—David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K

"Compelling . . . It might seem strange, just after an American military victory, to submit to the brooding brilliance of this book, The Culture of Defeat. But that sort of irony is one of the book's points. In this wide-ranging study, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, a cultural historian who has in previous books teased hidden meanings out of the origins of coffee or the onset of domestic lighting, incorporates a cautionary note. He points out that if history demonstrates anything, it is that 'what triumphs today will be defeated tomorrow.' The arrogance of power can be tempered, he argues, by an 'empathetic philosophy of defeat.'"—Edward Rothstein, The New York Times