“HOW COULD WE HAVE LET THIS HAPPEN”? As the government rolled out its domestic security apparatus after 9/11, I began thinking about historical lessons. I was struck by how much these new security manifestations echoed the past, specifically World War II. The Bush administration employed only one lesson from the earlier period: intolerance. But there was another lesson to be absorbed: regret for having overreacted to a wartime emergency, as evidenced by the following: The United States apologized and paid reparations to Japanese Americans in 1988. President Clinton signed legislation in 2000 requiring the Justice Department to account for its harassment of Italian Americans. Presently, Congress is about to build on Clinton's action by requiring an accounting for the treatment of German Americans and those Germans, Japanese, and Italians forcibly deported from Latin America from 1941–47 for internment or use as hostages in exchanges with the Axis. And now President Obama has pledged to close the detention facility at Guantánamo. Toujours regret, toujours….

DO WE PAY TOO MUCH ATTENTION TO HISTORY? Many writers and commentators have stated the obvious: history repeats itself, or nearly so. But how, specifically? Which present and future actions might be considered repetitious? Policymakers, the media, and the public typically embrace simplistic or muddled historical lessons, and each manipulates them to affirm their assumptions. When this lack of judgment and perspective coincided with the prejudices and insecurities of J. Edgar Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War, the result was an assault on the Bill of Rights, the ruin of countless reputations and family well being, and lost lives.

"Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles." —Justice Anthony Kennedy

Homeland Insecurity is the book I always intended to write. I had assumed that a thematic presentation of the World War II story, such as this book, needed to wait for readers to accept the reality of the event itself (many don't) and to absorb the details of the various alien/citizen control programs and their effects. Having presented scores of interviews and case studies in previous books, I believed I could now concentrate on the broader significance of the story in American history: the influence of historical precedent on domestic security practices, and the contest between security and the Constitution that is the heart of the story. I observe the impact on detainees and their families of profiling, FBI bungling, military commissions, secret arrests, suspension of due process and habeas corpus, deportation, extraordinary rendition, and second-class citizenship.

CAN IT HAPPEN AGAIN? The answer to that question may be the ultimate lesson of this tragic episode.

Critics praised Stephen Fox's America's Invisible Gulag as "must reading for all concerned about a repetition and erosion of civil liberties." Now, the award-winning author presents FEAR ITSELF (2007 ed.), a revised and expanded edition of the original, including new chapters on the role of German spies at Pearl Harbor and the forced deportation of Germans from Latin America.

Encouraged by President Franklin Roosevelt, who had warned earlier against giving in to fear, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI rounded up nearly 11,000 people of German ancestry, including Jewish refugees from occupied Europe and over 4,000 residents of Latin America.

Weaving together first-person interviews and government records in this unique study, Fox relates the inside story of internment and exclusion, and suggests answers to many key questions. Among them: What methods did the Justice Department and FBI employ? Why were some Germans nabbed but not others? Why were Jewish refugees and Latin Germans included? Why did internments continue for four years after the end of the war?

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin—more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit." —Bertrand Russell

"BRAVISSIMO!" - Andrew Rolle

UNCIVIL LIBERTIES powerfully demonstrates oral history's ability to challenge common assumptions. While the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II has been extensively reported, few are aware that the federal government also enacted a program that forced thousands of West Coast Italian and German aliens and their families to leave their homes and jobs. Law-abiding people who had lived in the United States for decades, including some who had sons in the armed forces, were subjected to surveillance and harassment simply because they had never obtained U.S. citizenship. Other Italians, including American citizens whose loyalty was deemed doubtful, were interned or excluded without due process.

"I tell you it was a crazy thing. Whoever thought up that law had screws loose someplace." —Mary Tolomei

In addition to extensive interviews, the book relies on government documents and newspaper accounts to reveal this little-known chapter in American history. The testimonies of those who were the objects of the government's unfounded suspicions and accusations provide a vivid portrait of the times. The painful, long-suppressed memories elicited in these interviews serve as a reminder of the fragility of the civil liberties of all people in a time of national crisis.