Book description
Britain and the USA carried out a massive bombing
offensive against the cities of Germany and Japan in the course of
the Second World War, which ended with the destruction of Hamburg,
Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was the bombing of civilian
targets justified by the necessities of war? Or was it, in fact, a
crime against humanity? How should we, the descendants of the Allies
who won the victory in that war, reply to the moral challenge of the
descendants of those whose cities were targeted? A. C. Grayling
looks at the stands people took, both for and against, and crucially
asks what are the lessons that we can learn for today about how
people should behave in a world of tension and moral confusion, of
terrorism and fragile democracies. Among the Dead Cities is
both a lucid and revealing work of modern history and an
investigation of conscience into one of the last remaining
controversies of that time.
 A provocative and readable study ... that is the purpose of his
book, to provoke our leaders, and those on whose behalf they purport to
act, to ask how to wage a war by methods short of barbarism' A. C.
Grayling is one of Britain s leading intellectuals. Professor of
Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a
supernumerary fellow of St. Anne s College, Oxford, he is the
multi-talented author of the best-selling
The Meaning of Things, The
Reason of Things
and
The Mystery of Things
. He is a regular contributor to
The Times,
the
Financial Times, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Economist,
Literary Review, New Statesman
and
Prospect,
and a frequent and popular contributor to radio and television,
including CNN, Newsnight, the Today programme, In Our Time and Start the
Week. He was a Man Booker judge in 2003, is a Fellow of the World
Economic Forum and an advisor on many committees ranging from Drug
Testing at Work to human rights groups.
