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Upstaging the Cold War: American Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy, 1940-1960 by Andrew J. Falk
Traditional interpretations of the 1950s have emphasized how American anti-communists deployed censorship and the blacklist to silence dissent, particularly in the realm of foreign policy. Yet those efforts at repression did not always succeed. Throughout the early years of the Cold War, a significant number of writers and performers continued to express controversial views about international relations in Hollywood films, through the new medium of television, on the Broadway stage, and from behind the scenes. By promoting superpower cooperation, decolonization, nuclear disarmament, and other taboo causes, dissident artists such as Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Rod Serling, Dalton Trumbo, Reginald Rose, and Paddy Chayefsky managed both to stretch the boundaries of Cold War ideology and to undermine some of its basic assumptions. Working at times under assumed names and in some cases outside the United States, they took on the role of informal diplomats who competed with Washington in representing America to the world. Ironically, the dissidents' international appeal eventually persuaded the U.S. foreign policy establishment that their unconventional views could be an asset in the Cold War contest for "hearts and minds," and their artistic work an effective means to sell American values and culture abroad. By the end of the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration not only appropriated the work of these talented artists but enlisted some of them to serve as official voices of Cold War cultural diplomacy.
Call Number: PN 1993.5 .U6 F34 2011
ISBN: 9781558499034
Publication Date: 2011-07-30
Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment by William Inboden
"The Cold War was in many ways a religious war. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and other American leaders believed that human rights and freedoms were endowed by God, that God had called the United States to defend liberty in the world, and that Soviet communism was especially evil because of its atheism and its enmity to religion. Along with security and economic concerns, these religious convictions also helped determine both how the United States defined the enemy and how it fought the conflict. Meanwhile, American Protestant churches failed to seize the moment. Internal differences over theology and politics, and resistance to cooperation with Catholics and Jews, hindered Protestant leaders domestically and internationally. Frustrated by these internecine disputes, Truman and Eisenhower attempted instead to construct a new civil religion. This public theology was used to mobilize domestic support for Cold War measures, to determine the strategic boundaries of containment, to appeal to people of all religious faiths around the world to unite against communism, and to undermine the authority of communist governments within their own countries." -- Publisher's description.
Call Number: E 813 .I54 2010
ISBN: 9780521156301
Publication Date: 2010-03-31
God-Fearing and Free: A Spiritual History of America's Cold War by Jason W. Stevens
Religion has been on the rise in America for decades -- which strikes many as a shocking new development. To the contrary, Jason Stevens asserts, the rumors of the death of God were premature. Americans have always conducted their cultural life through religious symbols, never more so than during the Cold War. In God-Fearing and Free, Stevens discloses how the nation, on top of the world and torn between grandiose self-congratulation and doubt about the future, opened the way for a new master narrative. The book shows how the American public, powered by a national religious revival, was purposefully disillusioned regarding the country's mythical innocence and fortified for an epochal struggle with totalitarianism. Stevens reveals how the Augustinian doctrine of original sin was refurbished and then mobilized in a variety of cultural discourses that aimed to shore up democratic society against threats preying on the nation's internal weaknesses. Suddenly, innocence no longer meant a clear conscience. Instead it became synonymous with totalitarian ideologies of the fascist right or the communist left, whose notions of perfectability were dangerously close to millenarian ideals at the heart of American Protestant tradition. As America became riddled with self-doubt, ruminations on the meaning of power and the future of the globe during the "American Century" renewed the impetus to religion. Covering a wide selection of narrative and cultural forms, Stevens shows how writers, artists, and intellectuals, the devout as well as the nonreligious, disseminated the terms of this cultural dialogue, disputing, refining, and challenging it -- effectively making the conservative case against modernity as liberals floundered. - Publisher.
Call Number: BR 526 .S74 2010
ISBN: 9780674055551
Publication Date: 2010-11-15
The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America's Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War by Jonathan P. Herzog
This fascinating volume shows that American leaders in the early Cold War years considered the conflict to be profoundly religious; they saw Communism not only as godless but also as a sinister form of religion. Fighting faith with faith, they deliberately used religious beliefs and institutions as part of the plan to defeat the Soviet enemy. Herzog offers an illuminating account of the resultant spiritual-industrial complex, chronicling the rhetoric, the programs, and the policies that became its hallmarks. He shows that well-known actions like the addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance were a small part of a much larger and relatively unexplored program that promoted religion nationwide. Herzog shows how these efforts played out in areas of American life both predictable and unexpected--from pulpits and presidential appeals to national faith drives, military training barracks, public school classrooms, and Hollywood epics. Millions of Americans were bombarded with the message that the religious could not be Communists, just a short step from the all-too-common conclusion that the irreligious could not be true Americans. -- Jacket.
Call Number: E 744 .H486 2011
ISBN: 9780195393460
Publication Date: 2011-08-05
Faith and War: How Christians Debated the Cold and Vietnam Wars by David E. Settje
Throughout American history, Christianity has shaped public opinion, guided leaders in their decision making, and stood at the center of countless issues. To gain complete knowledge of an era, historians must investigate the religious context of what transpired, why it happened, and how. Yet too little is known about American Christianity's foreign policy opinions during the Cold and Vietnam Wars. To gain a deeper understanding of this period (1964-75), David E. Settje explores the diversity of American Christian responses to the Cold and Vietnam Wars to determine how Americans engaged in debates about foreign policy based on their theological convictions. --From publisher description.
Call Number: BR 526 .S48 2011
ISBN: 9780814741337
Publication Date: 2011-06-13
On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold War by Thomas G. Paterson
How and why did the Cold War begin? How and why did it end? What will its end mean for international relations? Opening his new book with the drama of people struggling to survive in rubble-strewn countries after the Second World War, Thomas G. Paterson follows the long Cold War crisis though to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He examines features of the international system that guaranteed conflict: the great-power quest for order by building spheres of influence; the power, ideology, and strategic-economic needs of the United States and the Soviet Union that compelled activist, global foreign policies; and the personalities of key figures, from Truman to Bush, Stalin to Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In his exploration of the end of the Cold War, the author concludes that the two superpowers sought detente because they had been weakened by the economic costs of the Cold War, challenges from allies, and the diffusion of power in the international system after the rise of the Third World. As historical story and analysis, On Every Front provides a telling account of an era - of the making and unmaking of the Cold War.
Call Number: E 744 .P312 1992
ISBN: 9780393030600
Publication Date: 1993-01-17
The Cold War by John Mason
Mason provides concise coverage of the Cold War, paying particular attention to the Soviet-American dimension and drawing on the latest research of revisionist scholars. Complex events are clearly explained making this an ideal introductory text.
ISBN: 9780203439142
Publication Date: 2002-09-11
The Cold War by Bradley Lightbody
The Cold Warexamines the complex arguments which divided East and West following the end of the Second World War, and analyzes its eight major phases, including:* the emergence of the Cold War* Coexistence and Detente* Glasnost in the late 1980s.Combining factual overview and background discussion of the key issues such as the nuclear threat and who, if anyone, won the Cold War, with analysis of source material, students will find this a must-have in the study of this major historical event.
ISBN: 9780203979143
Publication Date: 2005-08-04
The Literary Cold War, 1945-Vietnam by Adam Piette
This is a ground-breaking study of the psychological and cultural impact of the Cold War on the imaginations of citizens in the UK and US. The Literary Cold War examines writers working at the hazy borders between aesthetic project and political allegory, with specific attention being paid to Vladimir Nabokov and Graham Greene as Cold War writers. The book looks at the special relationship as a form of paranoid plotline governing key Anglo-American texts from Storm Jameson to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, as well as examining the figure of the non-aligned neutral observer caught up in the sacrificial triangles structuring cold war fantasy. The book aims to consolidate and define a new emergent field in literary studies, the literary Cold War, following the lead of prominent historians of the period. Key Features One of the first influential monographs to look at leading Anglo-American writers 1945-Vietnam in terms of the Cold War as psychological and fantasy phenomenon Exemplary form of literary criticism combining close reading and new historical forms of research Significant readings of key postwar writers, including Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene and Vladimir Nabokov A major contribution to twentieth-century war studies, especially with its focus on the special relationship between the US and the UK, of obvious political and cultural relevance today
ISBN: 9780748635283
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Lincoln Gordon: Architect of Cold War Foreign Policy by Bruce L. R. Smith
After World War II, American statesman and scholar Lincoln Gordon emerged as one of the key players in the reconstruction of Europe. In this biography, Bruce L.R. Smith examines Gordon's substantial contributions to US mobilization during the Second World War, Europe's postwar economic recovery, the security framework for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and US policy in Latin America.
ISBN: 9780813161204
Publication Date: 2015-05-22
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