Analysis Of Blowback By Chalmers Johnson

The book, Blowback by Chalmers Johnson, is organized leading with the introduction, then the prologue, then the body of the book broken into ten chapters, then a section called further reading, then the notes, and lastly the index. It is not broken up into parts. This book is directed for a well-educated audience with a high-level vocabulary; if the reader does not have a high-level vocabulary, the book will be confusing, unless said reader has a dictionary at hand. The tone of Blowback is tense. This matches the subject of the book, which heeds a warning to Americans. Blowback is written as a revealing historical recount of America’s actions after the Cold War, especially those in East Asia and the Middle East. The author states the definition of blowback: “the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people.” Johnson argues that the United States

However, undergraduate students 15 years post-9/11, may not be as inept to read this book without being prompted. The book is more suited for graduate students with a better understanding of world politics. Before reading this book, I had always wondered how Americans could justify all of their actions, when we are considered terrorists in other countries, because we have killed and raped their women and children. This book shed light on a new perspective that I had never fully considered: America will have unintended consequences for the actions of the American government and military. Due to never thinking of this perspective, I learned a lot from this book, but I may not be able to argue against the thesis as well as someone more educated in foreign policy. I would recommend Blowback to someone who has a higher education on foreign politics than myself, because it is an interesting book, if understood properly. I would not recommend it to someone like myself, only halfway through my first class in foreign