Rethinking Cold War Culture

Rethinking Cold War Culture PDF Author: Peter J. Kuznick
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588344150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
This anthology of essays questions many widespread assumptions about the culture of postwar America. Illuminating the origins and development of the many threads that constituted American culture during the Cold War, the contributors challenge the existence of a monolithic culture during the 1950s and thereafter. They demonstrate instead that there was more to American society than conformity, political conservatism, consumerism, and middle-class values. By examining popular culture, politics, economics, gender relations, and civil rights, the contributors contend that, while there was little fundamentally new about American culture in the Cold War era, the Cold War shaped and distorted virtually every aspect of American life. Interacting with long-term historical trends related to demographics, technological change, and economic cycles, four new elements dramatically influenced American politics and culture: the threat of nuclear annihilation, the use of surrogate and covert warfare, the intensification of anticommunist ideology, and the rise of a powerful military-industrial complex. This provocative dialogue by leading historians promises to reshape readers' understanding of America during the Cold War, revealing a complex interplay of historical norms and political influences.

Rethinking Cold War Culture

Rethinking Cold War Culture PDF Author: Peter J. Kuznick
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588344150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
This anthology of essays questions many widespread assumptions about the culture of postwar America. Illuminating the origins and development of the many threads that constituted American culture during the Cold War, the contributors challenge the existence of a monolithic culture during the 1950s and thereafter. They demonstrate instead that there was more to American society than conformity, political conservatism, consumerism, and middle-class values. By examining popular culture, politics, economics, gender relations, and civil rights, the contributors contend that, while there was little fundamentally new about American culture in the Cold War era, the Cold War shaped and distorted virtually every aspect of American life. Interacting with long-term historical trends related to demographics, technological change, and economic cycles, four new elements dramatically influenced American politics and culture: the threat of nuclear annihilation, the use of surrogate and covert warfare, the intensification of anticommunist ideology, and the rise of a powerful military-industrial complex. This provocative dialogue by leading historians promises to reshape readers' understanding of America during the Cold War, revealing a complex interplay of historical norms and political influences.

Liberty and Justice for All?

Liberty and Justice for All? PDF Author: Kathleen G. Donohue
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN: 155849913X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
A wide-ranging exploration of the culture of American politics in the early decades of the Cold War

The Human Factor

The Human Factor PDF Author: Archie Brown
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198748701
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific questions: What were the values and assumptions of these leaders, and how did their perceptions evolve? What were the major influences on them? To what extent were they reflecting the views of their own political establishment or challenging them? How important for ending the East-West standoff were their interrelations? Would any of the realistically alternative leaders of their countries at that time have pursued approximately the same policies? The Cold War got colder in the early 1980s and the relationship between the two military superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, each of whom had the capacity to annihilate the other, was tense. By the end of the decade, East-West relations had been utterly transformed, with most of the dividing lines -including the division of Europe- removed. Engagement between Gorbachev and Reagan was a crucial part of that process of change. More surprising was Thatcher's role. Regarded by Reagan as his ideological and political soulmate, she formed also a strong and supportive relationship with Gorbachev (beginning three months before he came to power). Promoting Gorbachev in Washington as a man to do business with, she became, in the words of her foreign policy adviser Sir Percy Cradock, an agent of influence in both directions.

We Now Know

We Now Know PDF Author: John Lewis Gaddis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
One of America's leading historians offers the first major history of the Cold War. Packed with new information drawn from previously unavailable sources, the book offers major reassessments of Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev, Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Truman.

Rethinking Camelot

Rethinking Camelot PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608464032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Explores JFK’s role in US invasion of Vietnam and a reflects on the political culture that encouraged the Cold War.

Cold War on the Home Front

Cold War on the Home Front PDF Author: Greg Castillo
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816646910
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Greg Castillo presents an illustrated history of the persuasive impact of model homes, appliances, and furniture in Cold War propaganda.

Rethinking America's Security

Rethinking America's Security PDF Author:
Publisher: The American Assembly
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description


American Literature and Culture in an Age of Cold War

American Literature and Culture in an Age of Cold War PDF Author: Steven Belletto
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609381130
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Authors and artists discussed include: Joseph Conrad, Edwin Denby, Joan Didion, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Berbert, Richard Kim, Norman Mailer, Malcolm X, Alan Nadel, and John Updike,

Rethinking the Cold War

Rethinking the Cold War PDF Author: Allen Hunter
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781566395618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The end of the Cold War should have been an occasion to reassess its origins, history, significance, and consequences. Yet most commentators have restated positions already developed during the Cold War. They have taken the break-up of the Soviet Union, the shift toward capitalism and electoral politics in Eastern Europe and countries formerly in the USSR as evidence of a moral and political victory for the United States that needs no further elaboration. This collection of essays offers a more complex and nuanced analysis of Cold War history. It challenges the prevailing perspective, which editor Allen Hunter terms "vindicationism." Writing from different disciplinary and conceptual vantage points, the contributors to the collection invite a rethinking of what the Cold War was, how fully it defined the decades after World War II, what forces sustained it, and what forces led to its demise. By exploring a wide range of central themes of the era, Rethinking the Cold War widens the discussion of the Cold War's place in post-war history and intellectual life.

Innocent Weapons

Innocent Weapons PDF Author: Margaret Peacock
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Innocent Weapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War