Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

Bestselling author Nicholson Baker, recognized as one of the most dexterous and talented writers in the US today, has created a compelling work of non-fiction bound to provoke discussion and controversy -- a wide-ranging, astonishingly fresh perspective on the political and social landscape that gave rise to World War II. Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources -- including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries -- the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance towards overt global war and Holocaust. Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Baker has assembled a narrative within Human Smoke that unfolds gracefully, tragically, and persuasively.

'This quite extraordinary book—impossible to put down, impossible to forget—may be the most compelling argument for peace ever assembled. Nicholson Baker's meticulously curated catalogue of texts displays in astonishing, fascinating detail mankind's unstoppable descent into the madness of war—slowed only occasionally, but then invariably most movingly, by the still small voices of the sane and the wise'
—Simon Winchester, author of THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN, and the upcoming THE MAN WHO LOVED CHINA
'In HUMAN SMOKE, a metaphor for Auschwitz, Nicholson Baker turns his unrivalled literary talents to pacifism. Through a running narrative of press clippings, he details the steps toward war from 1914 up to 1941. His portraits of Churchill's imperial arrogance, Franklin Roosevelt's anti-Semitism, the machinations of the arms merchants, the Germans' death wish, and the efforts of pacifists are unforgettable. Baker's book is truly original'
—Chalmers Johnson, President & Cofounder of the Japan Policy Research Institute and author of THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE and NEMESIS: THE LAST DAYS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
'Nicholson Baker movingly pierces the lies, hopes, fears and myths we so easily imbibe on the road to war—painful reminders that what has happened in the past can happen again, and again, and again, until we shake loose and react'
—Gar Alperovitz, author THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
'[Baker's] selections contrast the inhumanity of the powerful with the heart-wrenching testimony of victims and survivors ... Selective, well-chosen fragments add up to a living history'
—Kirkus
'[M]any incidents carry an emotional wallop--of anger and shock at actions on all sides--that could force one to reconsider means and ends even in a 'good' war and to view the word 'terror' in a very discomfiting context'
—Publishers Weekly
'[a] bombshell of a book'
—Library Journal
'A passionate investigation of the human cost of war by a novelist with a conscience'
—Men's Vogue
'Brilliant ... Baker compiles a 500-page-plus chronicle composed of hundreds of succinct, quote-filled passages that, while chronologically linear, read kaleidoscoplically ... [An] ingeniously crafted book ... that blends the immediacy of reportage with gravitas that comes of digging away at deeper truths. By writing lucidly and fervidly about the machinations of those who sought war, Baker builds a dazzling homage to those who made the quest for peace the love of their live'
—Elle
'[a] brave and necessary book'
—Details
'Read HUMAN SMOKE. It may be one of the most important books you will ever read'
—LA Times
'HUMAN SMOKE [is] riveting and fascinating. It is as though a brilliant film editor, with an urgent argument to make, began to work with gripping newsreels ... a serious and conscientious contribution to the debate about pacifism. [Baker] has produced an eloquent and passionate assault on the idea that the deliberate targeting of civilians can ever be justified'
—New York Times
'Baker deserves credit for attempting something daring in his book: charging a WWII story with pacifism rather than militarism ... [T]his is a book to be read, thought about, and if a reader is motivated by its antiwar message, used as a manifesto for action'
—America in World War II
'[W]ith his unconventional structure and crystalline prose, Baker manages to make what could easily be just another history book into anything but'
—Time Out
'[HUMAN SMOKE is] the kind of project that encourages, rather than closes off, further reading. Its texture is deeply convincing, and a much stronger message of peace than mere argument could ever muster'
—New York Magazine
'A stunning reconsideration in a series of fact-laden, impressionistic flashes'
—San-Diego Union Tribune
'[HUMAN SMOKE] also takes a nightmare that we are too familiar with, all too comfortable with, and retells it afresh, poking and prodding us, challenging our self-assigned sense of goodness, and ultimately keening at the charnel house that Europe became for six horrible years in the middle of the 20th century'
—Chicago Sun Times
'HUMAN SMOKE pioneers a fresh mode of serious nonfiction'
—Veryshortlist.com
'An original, provocative, sometimes breathtaking read'
—ChristianScienceMonitor.com
'Fascinating ... [Baker] is interested above all in trying to find a way to step to one side of the endless rhetorical circles by which ends justify means, and the means of the other side justify making your means your ends. He is interested in the self-affirming pathology of violence, and in the ways that a war, waged by all means deemed necessary by its leaders, became on both sides a racist war of extermination'
—The Spectator 23/4

'But was the Second World War quite what we think it was? I have just read HUMAN SMOKE, by the American author Nicholson Baker. It has caused controversy in the US, and will probably be the most hotly debated book of the year when it reaches Britain next month.
Essentially, Baker puts the pacifist case against the Second World War. I am not a pacifist and, therefore, do not accept it. The historical evidence that Baker adduces is selective and sometimes unreliable ... Baker's account, however, reminds us that the war was not fought for humanitarian or democratic ends. Britain fought Germany for the same reason it had always fought wars in Europe: to maintain the balance of power and prevent a single state dominating the continent. America fought Japan to stop the growth of a powerful rival in the Pacific.
The book ends on December 31 1941. At that moment, he says, "most of the people who died in the second world war were still alive". They included nearly all victims of what we now call the Holocaust. Did waging the war "help anyone who needed help"? Baker asks rhetorically, and gives his answer through a series of documentary snapshots'
—Peter Wilby, Guardian Online
‘It is welcome that he has advanced a rickety pacifist case, if only to stimulate us into marshalling the reasons for rejecting it’
—Max Hastings, Sunday Times 4/5
‘There is no denying the moral courage and noble purpose of many conscientious objectors. Baker represents them well’
—Guardian 3/5
'HUMAN SMOKE deserves an enthusiastic reception. It is to be admired for the same reason as Martin Amis's writing about 9/11, THE SECOND PLANE, and will probably be attacked with similar vehemence. What we have, in both instances, are powerful writers turning their distinctive energies and sensibilities to the huge issues of the day -- and of all our yesterdays'
—Geoff Dyer, Financial Times 3/5
'The difference between this and other histories of the subject is that it is told entirely in half-page chunks of anecdotes or reports from newspapers, diaries or memoirs'
—Daily Mail 2/5
'Fascinating, chilling, instructive, gripping'
—AC Grayling, The Times 3/5
'Since popular history is one of the most unadventurous of genres, and military history especially so, it is always refreshing to come across a book that takes a familiar subject and does something different'
—Sunday Telegraph 3/5
‘[An] extraordinary book, which is, at the very least, a new way of looking at the steps that led to 1939, and the conduct of the war until America’s entry in 1941 ... '‘What if we had all stood outside and waited for Hitler’s raving to end and then gone on as before?’' It is a crucial question and one that has rarely been better articulated than in HUMAN SMOKE’
— Tim Adams, Observer 1/6
‘Churchill was a warmonger, an early admirer of Mussolini, and an anti-Semite; we first encounter Roosevelt fretting about the high proportion of Jews reading law at Harvard. Interspersed with such episodes are anecdotes from the life of Gandhi, the work of the Quakers and meetings of the Peace Pledge Union. The cumulative message is that war is bad, the Second World War was especially deplorable, and the warmongering leaders of the West were as much to blame as the Fascist leaders of Germany and Italy...’
— TLS 13/6
'Human Smoke makes you challenge all you thought you knew about Churchill, and about war'
Tim Adams, Books of the Year, New Statesman 17/11
'A riveting account of the early stages of the Second World War. Using a series of documentary snapshots, Baker argues the at the war wasn't fought for humanitarian or democratic ends and that it is doubtful that it saved lives. His case is a pacifist one, which I do not accept, but I found it stimulating, and the parallels with the Iraq War are instructive'
Peter Wilby, Books of the Year, New Statesman 17/11
"A riveting account of the early stages of the Second World War. Using a series of documentary snapshots, Baker argues that the war wasn't fought for humanitarian or democratic ends and that it is doubtful that it saved lives. His case is a pacifist one, which I do not accept, but I found it stimulating, and the parallels with the Iraq War are instructive"
Peter Wilby, Books of the Year, New Statesman 17/11

'I swallowed Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker hole. An avowedly partisan collection of sources illustrating the escalation of the 'Good War', this is not the familiar account taught in schools and endlessly repeated on television - this truly is 'in colour.' Churchill is portrayed as a belligerent, bloodthirsty gambler and Roosevelt as a Machiavellian gnome single-handedly goading the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor'
Oliver Beatty, Leatherworker, Books of the Year, Observer 30/11

'A huge, sweeping no-fiction work about the origins of the Second World War. It's unusual, too: Baker tells you about the rise of Hitler, and the world's reaction to it, in hundreds of bite-sized pieces, often culled from the newspapers of the day. It's an excellent technique - we find ourselves looking at vignettes of Churchill, Chamberlain, Hitler and Roosevelt, as well as lots of others, including pacifists such as Gandhi and the American Clarence Pickett. You get the impres...