"Beginning with responses to fascism in the 1930s and ending with protests against the Iraq wars, David McCarthy shows how American artists--including Philip Evergood, David Smith, H. C. Westermann, Ed Kienholz, Nancy Spero, Leon Golub, Chris Burden, Robert Arneson, Martha Rosler, and Coco Fusco--have borne witness, registered dissent, and asserted the ability of the imagination to uncover truths about individuals and nations. During what has been called the American Century, the United States engaged in frequent combat overseas while developing technologies of unprecedented lethality. Many artists, working individually or collectively, produced antiwar art to protest the use or threat of military violence in the service of an expansionist state. Creative work was a way to participate in democratic exchange by challenging and clarifying government and media perspectives on armed conflict."--Provided by publisher.