Rethinking Cold War Culture

Rethinking Cold War Culture PDF Author: Peter J. Kuznick
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588344150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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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 : 240

Get Book

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 the Cold War

Rethinking the Cold War PDF Author: Allen Hunter
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439904561
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A path-breaking collection of essays by cutting-edge authors that reassess the Cold War since the fall of communism.

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.

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

An Analysis of John Lewis Gaddis's We Now Know

An Analysis of John Lewis Gaddis's We Now Know PDF Author: Scott Gilfillan
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351351796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
John Lewis Gaddis had written four previous books on the Cold War by the time he published We Now Know – so the main thrust of his new work was not so much to present new arguments as to re-examine old ones in the light of new evidence that began emerging from behind the Iron Curtain after 1990. In this respect, We Now Know can be seen as an important exercise in evaluation; Gaddis not only undertook to reassess his own positions – arguing that this was the only intellectually honest course open to him in such changing circumstances – but also took the opportunity to address criticisms of his early works, not least by post-revisionist historians. The straightforwardness and flexibility that Gaddis exhibited in consequence enhanced his book's authority. He also deployed interpretative skills to help him revise his methodology and reinterpret key historical arguments, integrating new, comparative histories of the Cold War era into his broader argument.

Rethinking Camelot

Rethinking Camelot PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608464458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The famed political critic “analyzes the issue most prominently posed in Oliver Stone’s film JFK . . . strong arguments against Kennedy mythologists” (Publishers Weekly). Rethinking Camelot is a thorough analysis of John F. Kennedy’s role in the US invasion of Vietnam and a probing reflection on the elite political culture that allowed and encouraged the Cold War. In it, Chomsky dismisses efforts to resurrect Camelot—an attractive American myth portraying JFK as a shining knight promising peace, foiled only by assassins bent on stopping this lone hero who would have unilaterally withdrawn from Vietnam had he lived. Chomsky argues that US institutions and political culture, not individual presidents, are the key to understanding US behavior during Vietnam. Rethinking Camelot is “an interesting work not only for the history it explores, but also as a study of how various individuals and groups write and interpret history” (Choice). Praise for Noam Chomsky “Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet.” —The New York Times Book Review “The conscience of the American people.” —New Statesman “Reading Chomsky is like standing in a wind tunnel. With relentless logic, Chomsky bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us—and to discern what they are leaving out . . . The questions Chomsky raises will eventually have to be answered. Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening.” —Business Week “One of the radical heroes of our age . . . a towering intellect . . . powerful, always provocative.” —The Guardian

The Culture of the Cold War

The Culture of the Cold War PDF Author: Stephen J. Whitfield
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801851957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
In a new epilogue to this second edition, he extends his analysis from the McCarthyism of the 1950s, including its effects on the American and European intelligensia, to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and beyond.

The Human Factor

The Human Factor PDF Author: Archie Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190614919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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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'.

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,

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