Like the rest of the baby-boom generation, Norman Solomon grew up in a nation of dazzling progress and ominous shadows. Behind the upbeat TV shows and glib optimism there lurked private anguish and the specter of nuclear holocaust. Young people confronted a divisive war in Vietnam and distress in their own lives. Now, several decades later, Americans face similar divisions and a potentially endless “war on terror.”

Blending personal history and social commentary, Made Love, Got War documents five decades of rising American militarism and the media’s all-too-frequent failure to challenge it. The author’s unique weave of personal narrative and historical inquiry, Daniel Ellsberg notes in the foreword, “helps us understand where we are now and how we got here.”

Drawing on 40 years of intense activism, Solomon shows how the mainstream media have shaped our view of war, technology, and national purpose. In the process, he also shows why he is considered “one of the sharpest media-watchers in the business” (Barbara Ehrenreich) and “a formidable thinker and activist” (Los Angeles Times).

Solomon’s firsthand experiences and compelling narrative raise an essential question: To what ends should America use its awesome political, economic, media, and scientific power? Made Love, Got War will help readers to find meaningful answers.

Praise for Made Love, Got War

The Oregonian
Sunday, November 18, 2007
The Freezing of Love into Small Spaces
Link

The Austin Chronicle
Published October 26, 2007
Point Austin: Public Accuracy: Norman Solomon on a life of activism and writing
Link

Blogcritics.org Book Review by Movable Feast
Published September 22, 2007
Link

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 2007

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Since he was first under FBI surveillance at age 14 in the mid-1960s, Norman Solomon has been on a collision course with what he calls “the warfare state.” In recent years — with his books War Made Easy and Target Iraq and with frequent appearances on TV and radio — Solomon has cemented his reputation as (in the words of the Los Angeles Times) “a formidable thinker and activist.”

His new book, MADE LOVE, GOT WAR: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State (PoliPointPress, $24.95, hardcover, October 2007, ISBN: 978-0-9778253-4-9), is a more personal account of the author’s four decades of trying to stop his country’s march to one war after another. The narrative begins with Sputnik — which marks its 50th anniversary on October 4, 2007 — and continues through the war in Iraq.

The book includes accounts of the author’s controversial trips to Baghdad and Tehran with Sean Penn as well as televised showdowns with Judith Miller and other pro-war journalists before the invasion of Iraq. Made Love, Got War blends personal reflections with social commentary and firsthand accounts of Solomon’s activism and reporting from the late 1960s to present-day Tehran.

Norman Solomon is a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics and the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His op-ed pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, TruthOut.org, HuffingtonPost.com, CommonDreams.org, AlterNet.org, and many other outlets. He has been interviewed as a guest on the PBS “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” and “Book TV.” Solomon is a winner of the George Orwell Award from the National Council of Teachers of English, honoring distinguished contributions to honesty and clarity in public language.

“Norman’s eyewitness descriptions of key events are a perfect backdrop to his critique of our country’s increasingly militaristic development of the science of death and of the media’s failure to question. We should all heed his call to activism, or our children’s future could be in doubt.”
– Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey

“Here is a book with a thousand memories for those of us who came of political age while living through urban riots, the Vietnam War, and the Nixon years. Norman Solomon, one of America’s most respected progressive voices, gets personal in this account of living through the age of Vietnam, Nixon, tie-dye T-shirts, girlfriends, and even the music that will forever waft through the minds of those of us who were there. Those of us who, like journalist Solomon, will never forget.”
– Phil Donahue

Contact:
Darcy Cohan
(415) 339-4111
darcycohan@p3books.com