Book Description
"Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?" As if in answer to this poignant question from John Updike's Rabbit at Rest, Stephen Whitfield examines the impact of the Cold War--and its dramatic ending--on American culture in an updated version of his highly acclaimed study. 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.
Whitfield treats his subject matter with the eye of a historian, reminding the reader that the Cold War is now a thing of the past. His treatment underscores the importance of the Cold War to our national identity and forces the reader to ask, Where do we go from here? The question is especially crucial for the Cold War historian, Whitfield argues. His new epilogue is partly a guide for new historians to tackle the complexities of Cold War studies.
Customer Reviews:
Solid overview of US cultural history from 1946-1962.......2004-06-11
Whitfield's book serves as a succinct overview of American Cold War culture, which he defines as ending in the early 1960s (a questionable decision but one made by many scholars who employ the "Cold War Culture" rubric).
What sets apart this book from other entries in the literature is Whitfield's recognition of the importance of religion to Cold War America and his willingness to grapple with the Cold War's full range of moral implications (an element lacking in most academic studies of the domestic side of the Cold War, which tend to fixate endlessly on McCarthy, who is used to tar and discredit all variants of American anti-Communism). This is not to suggest that Whitfield is an apologist for McCarthy, not at all, but to commend Whitfield for understanding that, to paraphrase Arthur Koestler, the Cold War was the story of the United States fighting for a half-truth against a total lie.
Culture of Cold War -- Whitfield.......2001-07-14
Whitfield's book is extremely informative. The connections he makes are fascinating. The book made me want to go out to the library and Blockbuster and look at the popular books and movies he talks about for a second time in a fresh light.
Intelectually Challenging.......2001-02-17
This was rated a "3" by me because it was a little redundant as well as choppy. The book was great in the sense of intelecutal reading but lacked the story like atmosphere. I wouldn't recommend this book to be read for enjoyment, but it would be great if it were used as research on a paper. The chapters are broken up into sections 1,2,3,..etc, so once you have read one section the rest are really just other examples of what the author is trying to get across, easy to skim through for good facts and info. Good Luck!
Book Description
This book is a perfect example of how today's liberals have completely rewritten history to cover up their own role on the wrong side of the Cold War.
Customer Reviews:
Refreshing: But Not Surprising........2007-07-16
The author writes crisply without the vitriol of Ann Coulter. The avowed purpose of the book is to serve as an eternal reminder of the malignant gullibility of the American left{as in the blame the USA first crowd}, in dealing with world communism. It is worth the price just for all the verifiable quotes from a huge array of kooks. From Chris Dodd stating that Reagan was going against the tide of history, to the inane Ted Turner fawning over Gorbachev, to William Coffin's claiming that having nuclear weapons is innately sinful. The author also refutes the left's claim that they helped win the "cold war." She shows in detail that they opposed most tactics & strategies used by the free west to win. The only flaws in the book are that it should have come out earlier, & could have been twice as long.
Idiots Then Idiots Now.......2007-06-23
Lenin is generally credited with saying that world communism has been aided by well-meaning but gullible useful idiots, most of whom he saw as western leftists who even back in the 1920s saw a kinship with communism. Not much has changed since then and in USEFUL IDIOTS, Mona Charen takes the entire liberal left to task for its decades long adherence to a philosophy that has brought ruin and genocide to millions but still exists in our universities even when it no longer does so in the Soviet state that spawned it. Despite the book's sales blurbs that suggest that leading Hollywood celebrities like Harry Belafonte and Susan Sarandon and MoveOn.Org politicians like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore are directly responsible for the all-pervasive tsunami of secular progressivism, these and others of a similar ilk get remarkably little ink. They emerge more as symbols of rather than originators of the useful idiots syndrome. Most of Charen's animus is directed toward the full spectrum of a liberalism that emerged from the 60s and the fallout from the Vietnam war that galvanized the left into seeing the United States not only as the source of imperialistic excesses but also of all the world's assorted ills. Her most telling chapters detail how "America's role in Vietnam set the tone for every Cold War debate that would follow for the next thirty-five years." (Page 28) Charen notes that while leftist fascination with America as intrinsically evil had existed even early enough for Lenin to offer his (sorry for the pun) left-handed compliment of useful idiots, "in the mid-1960s, leftist anti-Americanism went mainstream." (Page 29)
The bulk of Charen's book deals with liberalism in the aggregate. She notes how post 60s liberals saw Communism through the lens of a half-hearted sympathetic patina that somehow managed to excuse every Communist bloodbath while failing to excuse what it saw as a genocidal equivalent from the United States, even when it was clear that this equivalent existed more in the minds of the left than in the minds of the victims. The deaths of millions due to Stalin's forced collectivization is not only portrayed by the liberals as either non-existent or grossly exaggerated but even if it did happen, the United States was somehow at fault. This then is the core thesis of the left. Evil exists in this world, but where it has been identified, it originates in the capitalistic excesses of America. Mona Charen in USEFUL IDIOTS tells in compelling detail that idiots go through life with self-imposed blinders, the result of which is destructive to those who even now look to the left for help and guidance.
Freudian Title.......2006-12-25
The title of this book inadvertently refers to the author herself. This book is "useful" to the extent that it serves the persistent neo-con tactic of preventing any honest criticism of US foreign policy by hauling out vacuous phrases like "blame America first" or "conspiracy theory" or "moral equivalence" or like nonsense from the Reagan/Kirkpatrick crowd. Skip this book. Notice the 100 or so used copies on sale starting at 1 cent? It's pap.
useful misdirection.......2006-11-19
Ms.Charen bandies about misdirecting terms like "Statist", "Atheist", and "Believers" to frame the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in terms that do not exist.
The United States is no less a State than the Soviet Union was. We owe our victory over the Soviet Union to our performance as a state. We owe it the industrial strength and prosperity we built up under geographic and economic (relative)isolation. We owe it to the high Progressive Income taxes of FDR, Harry Truman, Ike Eisenhower, Kennedy, and even Richard Nixon.
Not even the Reagan Tax cuts for the rich, raising of social security taxes for the poor and lower middle class, embracing of globalism, and general mindlessness could stop the United States from outlasting the Soviet Union in the global endurance race.
Our European allies in the cold war, Canada, and nearly every other developed nation comparable in prosperity is certainly a State that conservatives would consider socialistic.
America under Globalism, unrestricted free trade, and Reaganomic/Greenspanomics can look forward to more of the same: massive deficits, resource wars, debt, and expanding rotting urban cores.
We've outdone every other developed nation in turning most of our cities into expanding rotting urban cores. In exchange we get the addiction to oil. I can't imagine a corporation engaging in the warfare and nationbuilding necessary to keep the oil imports coming. Nope, it requires a massive state undertaking. Especially that thanks to Globalism, India and China technically have far more to trade for that oil than we do. Basically, we can trade wheat for oil. How many farmers do you know make decent incomes?
Useful Idiots is a great book for those who trying to Misdirect, lie, or are just plain stupid.
Think about this.......2006-11-12
Please. Please give liberals all your arrogant "pity" and contempt. We just swept the House and Senate and made your simpering chimp president a lame duck. We don't hate America or blame it first. We blame cynical republican profiteers, who devise simplistic useless policy and foist it onto an electorate without the awareness to know they're being manipulated. And you'll continue to lose as long as your a bunch of hypocritical moralists, who text-message teen boys from the Senate, rip off Indian tribes over casinos, beat thir wives, pay off their mistresses, offer to save your soul while smoking crystal meth, and stuff deerheads into peoples mailboxes etc. Good Luck coming back from the abyss, losers. Screeds like this aren't going to help. America has wised up to your lame tricks.
Book Description
Thank you, our Stalin, for a happy childhood." "Thank you, dear Marshal [Stalin], for our freedom, for our children's happiness, for life." Between the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, Soviet public culture was so dominated by the power of the state that slogans like these appeared routinely in newspapers, on posters, and in government proclamations. In this penetrating historical study, Jeffrey Brooks draws on years of research into the most influential and widely circulated Russian newspapers--including Pravda, Isvestiia, and the army paper Red Star--to explain the origins, the nature, and the effects of this unrelenting idealization of the state, the Communist Party, and the leader.
Brooks shows how, beginning with Lenin, the Communists established a state monopoly of the media that absorbed literature, art, and science into a stylized and ritualistic public culture--a form of political performance that became its own reality and excluded other forms of public reflection. He presents and explains scores of self-congratulatory newspaper articles, including tales of Stalin's supposed achievements and virtue, accounts of the country's allegedly dynamic economy, and warnings about the decadence and cruelty of the capitalist West. Brooks pays particular attention to the role of the press in the reconstruction of the Soviet cultural system to meet the Nazi threat during World War II and in the transformation of national identity from its early revolutionary internationalism to the ideology of the Cold War. He concludes that the country's one-sided public discourse and the pervasive idea that citizens owed the leader gratitude for the "gifts" of goods and services led ultimately to the inability of late Soviet Communism to diagnose its own ills, prepare alternative policies, and adjust to new realities.
The first historical work to explore the close relationship between language and the implementation of the Stalinist-Leninist program, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! is a compelling account of Soviet public culture as reflected through the country's press.
Customer Reviews:
Soviet culture and Pravda.......2005-12-04
Though by reading his title one may think that this book is a history of public culture in all its manifestations, Brooks' monograph focuses on the press. While taking into account many of the newspapers available in the Soviet Union, his focus is on Pravda, since `it was the center of the informational system.' (xix) Not having a sound methodology of choosing which articles to include in his survey, he instead chooses a random sample based on three criteria; one, every tenth editorial in Pravda from 1917 to Stalin's death, two, articles published on important holidays, three, reports on domestic affairs in a random sample of Pravda issues. With these articles as his guide, he seeks to investigate public culture.
Brooks calls Soviet public culture, as he defines it, as a performance. `Political activity has always been akin to drama', he writes, and `Stalin and others employed rituals of theater to draw citizens into public displays of support.' (xvi) While the image newspapers sought to create of the regime more often than naught conflicted with reality, `Soviet people could not take the public culture as a fairy tale because it infiltrated every aspect of their lives.' (xvii)
On November 9, 1917, the day after they seized power, the Bolsheviks nationalized the publishing industry. Initially, the Bolsheviks sought to use the press to persuade the population to their revolutionary cause; however, the language of the new authorities was often not understood by the masses. Further consolidation of the press into a state monopoly increased this inability to communicate. This brought upon a `shift from persuasion to compulsion in the late 1920's.' (18)
A new political class and a new social structure arose during the first decade of Soviet rule for whom `socialist building' had great appeal. The expansion of the state meant upward mobility and jobs in the public sector. Stories in the press of mobility and service legitimated the new hierarchy. In the 30s, `Stalin became the living protagonist of an almost sacred cult.' (60) And it was to him, and to a lesser extent the party, that all Soviet citizens owed a great debt to for the reported great gains of the turbulent period.
Until the completion of the first five-year plan in 1932, the press had emphasized self-sacrifice. This changed after 1932, when the plan was hailed as a success. `The ethos of self-denial for a cause ... gave way to perpetual indebtedness.' (83) Following this `great break' (author's words), the so-called `economy of the gift' became prevalent. There developed a society in which public allocation of resources `were officially presented as moral transactions, and performers who publicly thanked Stalin validated personal ties to the leader.' (84) Even having a normal job was seen as a gift, thus indebting the entire nation to the regime. Hence comes the quote which graces the title, `Thank You, Comrade Stalin, for a Happy Childhood'.
With the advent of World War Two, the press abandoned its effort to center all Soviet identity on Stalin. `Within months of the invasion', Brooks write, `the war spawned a plurality of intertwined narratives and a range of perspectives.' (160) As the war turned for the worse, the cult of Stalin waned. It was during the war when journalists were allowed a `breath of fresh air', and some journalists `tentatively displayed aspects of a civil society.' (175) This is a very strong statement, one that Brooks really doesn't seem to follow up on, or perhaps address effectively. Nevertheless, once `the tide of battle turned from defeat to victory, Stalin reasserted his public persona, and another narrative of the war arose.' (185) Stalin resumed his place at the top of the hierarchy, `the font of recognition and honor.' (186) Following the war, the population's presumed indebtedness to Stalin increased. Victory in the war became attributed to Stalin, and Stalin alone.
To sum up, I'm going to cop out and just toss in this paragraph from the epilogue:
Through his charisma, Stalin established the `otherness of the Soviet experience, its exceptionalism and independence from strictures that governed other societies. By accepting him as leader and prophet, participants in the performative culture were able to enhance their own power, justify the rightness of their cause, and deny the applicability of all other standards of behavior and morality ... The gratitude they expressed in what I have called the moral economy of the gift can be understood as a personal expression of gratefulness to Stalin and of the bond between them. The officials, activists, and enthusiasts who enjoyed this bond with Stalin were the government's link to the general populace ... This is why the pedagogical function of the performance was so important. Participants who comprised the "link" rehearsed the routines of the social order and so communicated their understanding of "the facts of life" to others.
Turgid writing style mars what should have been great book.......2000-07-05
Although this book provides a valuable insight into the dark heart of Stalinism it is marred by an exceedingly odd mixture of writing styles. In part it feels like a turgid academic thesis packed with sentences so convoluted that they don't make sense however many times you read them. But elsewhere Brooks shakes off the leaden prose and delivers just what I expected from the blurb -- an incise study of how Stalinism developed through the eyes of the media. There is a great deal of interesting material here and Brooks has obviously done a huge amount of research. He shows how Stalin gradually throttled the life out of the media and turned newspapers and magazines into codebooks for the Soviet elite, packed with dead language and curious ideas which were of crucial importance to those jostling madly for influence and of no interest or value to the general population. But every time I felt like giving the book the five stars it should have merited, I came across a passage like the following: "In a play, actors and audience briefly leave the quotidian world to enter a special arena of time and space. To describe this realm of the 'betwixt and between' in which wishes or dreams hold sway, one can employ the concept of 'liminal', that is, a threshold between sacred and profane, a transitional zone that participants in a ritual must enter in order to leave the everyday world. Arnold van Gennep, who introduced the notion in his classic 1908 study, The Rites of Passage, postulated three phrases of ritual drama..." I shall spare you the no less impenetrable thoughts of van Gennep. Brooks also has a weakness for the word 'Manicheanism' which appears far too often in this text. I write these words of criticism with a heavy heart, because inside the verbiage there is a very good book waiting to break out. Brooks has done enough to ensure that every half-serious student of Stalinism will have to buy this book, but I only wish he had found an editor able to strip away the excess words.
Book Description
In a substantial new afterword to his classic account of the collapse of American triumphalism in the wake of World War II, Tom Engelhardt carries that story into the twenty-first century. He explores how, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the younger George Bush headed for the Wild West (Osama bin Laden, "Wanted, Dead or Alive"); how his administration brought "victory culture" roaring back as part of its Global War on Terror and its rush to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq; and how, from its "Mission Accomplished" moment on, its various stories of triumph crashed and burned in that land.
Customer Reviews:
Nice and easy.......2007-08-31
Nice and easy - I was very pleased with the service and timelyness. Plus the book is in great condition
Book Review: "The End of Victory Culture : Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation".......2006-04-10
American "triumphalism" and the American "war story" began its decline after WWII and collapsed completely after Vietnam (or so the author thought). The victory myth is constructed out of an America history that has its roots in the Puritan struggle. The US had always fought against the evil oppressors of freedom, democracy, and the freedom of peaceful worship. The myth of American triumph was part of 1950s "boy culture" and was depicted on screen in the justifiable slaughter of Indians on the western frontier; cowboys and /or Cavalrymen who rescued families and females from savages; science-fiction and vengeance movies, and eventually in galactic villians and Evil Empires. War stories and movies consumed by Baby Boomers vindicated the annihilation of (usually non-white but always non-American) villains.
Central to the maintenance of the victory culture in American is the "war story" a tale in which there is an evil Other who threatens the United States. Contributing to the end of victory culture was the almost immediate reevaluation of the atomic bombing of Japan after WWII; an event that left the United States looking more terrifying than protective . The Cold War followed the euphoric victory of WWII . In the Cold War there was no victory or defeat; and the enemy and self became blurred and threatened to merge. Many of the villains in the Cold War were other Americans; rather than victory, the US sought containment. Then came Korea, a failed police action, better off forgotten. The Vietnam War was a disaster. Even the president lost enthusiasm for a battle where there appeared to be no definable enemy. Even the sacred cowboy was attacked as racist during the d?nouement of the victory culture. New westerns depicted sociopathic bad guys in cowboy hats rampaging around the West hunting down innocent Indians. In the late 1960s, even military toys were transformed into action figures. "Boy culture" was not recaptured until Ronald Reagan appeared on the scene with his Star Wars rhetoric. George H. W. Bush seized on the opportunity to eliminate the evil dictator Saddam Hussein; only to have his efforts to win a "war to re-establish war, American style" and capture the bad guy fail.
Engelhardt is an active journalist and writer who was surprised in 2000 when the United States elected George W. Bush President. Geroge W. Bush, he says, is a man "who had stayed way too long in those dark movie theaters" watching cowboys and Indians; a man who managed to evade both sides of the Vietnam War debate; a man who glories in the victory clture and wants to relive a period in American history when bugles blared, crowds cheered, and flags waved. In The End of Victory Culture Engelhardt failed to predict that 2005 would see a US President whose dream is to "dress up like G.I. Joe, [and] appear in front of massed ranks of soldiers chanting "hoo-rah," and assure the crowd he was going to bring `em back dead or alive (tomdispatch.com). This book's value is in its examination of the impact of popular culture in shaping public perceptions of the US and its place in the world. Sources include popular culture products such as Mad magazine, TV shows, monster movies, and westerns. Tom Engelhardt graduated from Yale University; he is a book editor and a freelance journalist. He maintains a website, www.tomdispatch.com; is co-founder of the American Empire Project; a consulting editor at Metropolitan Books; a fellow of the Nation Institute; and lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley.
one of my favorites..........2006-03-23
With the outcome in Iraq still uncertain more than 3 years after the U.S. led invasion, many people have blamed the media for not being critical enough at the outset of the war. Additionally, as the war rages on, comparisons to Vietnam are becoming especially noticeable as a growing number of people continue to question our involvement in Iraq.
These two relatively recent phenomena of questioning the media's role in wartime and the tendency for U.S citizens to be skeptical of their government during war took root during the Vietnam war.
According to Tom Englehardt in "The End of Victory Culture," prior to Vietnam the media played a key role in perpetuating the idea of a noble and just United States battling savages of color including Native Americans and Japanese soldiers in World War II.
The public eagerly imbibed this "victory culture," regularly attending movies featuring John Wayne defending America by battling Indians; playing games like "cowboys and indians;" and reading cartoons featuring horribly caricatured Japanese and Chinese soldiers, never questioning the integrity of the government or doubting United States policies.
A seismic shift occured during Vietnam when, for the first time, Americans became especially frustrated over a war that could no longer be justified by statements from the President. Demonstrations raged throughout the country as the once sacred tenants of U.S. heroism and leadership were shattered.
During this time, the media's role transformed as well. Rather than mindlessly trumpeting American nobility, the media worked doggedly to unearth the truth. David Halberstam's coining of the term "quagmire" when referring to war and Morley Saffert's piece revealing the horrible killings of helpless Vietnamese villagers are just two examples that Englehardt cites.
Although accounts from Vietnam and World War II comprise the bulk of Englehardt's thesis, he provides copious examples of the movies and excerpts from television programs when talking about the 1980's in an effort to further demonstrate the dismantling of the "victory culture."
Brilliantly written and extremely well documented, Englehardt has written a gem of a book that remains as relevant today as it was 11 years ago when it was first published.
A different perspective on post-war culture and history.......2006-03-07
Tom Engelhardt's dense but throughly readable cultural history presents the past fifty-six years of American history as an investigation of narrative. A common theme in analysis of nationalism and nationality is the concept of an historical narrative that members of a nationality look to for explaining their present position within their world. Engelhardt investigates a time period that saw, as he argues, a violent uprooting and reconfiguration of the American cultural narrative.
This narrative makes use of a wide ranging set of metpahors and images, such as the frontier and its mythology of American innocence, that have helped Americans understand their position within a complex and ever changing world. World War II provided the last war in which the innocence of America was posited with little debate (although the dropping of the atom bomb indeed challenged this innocence).
The beginning of the cold war and military endeavors in Korea and Viet Nam saw a gradual erroding of this narrative of innocence. As the enemy became harder to identify, at times even looking like ourselves in the case of anti-communism, the moral clarity and absolute innocence of American military actions disolved. Engelhardt takes a sweeping view of the last half-century of American history and tracks the profound shift in narrative and cultural understanding that we are still dealing with. It would be interesting to see what Engelhardt would say about September 11th. I would argue it has restored much of America's innocence, allowing us to attack Iraq with little domestic objection.
Engelhardt writes with an engaging voice helping to make what could be a tedious read quite enjoyable. At times his ideas can be difficult to connect, making this a book to be tackled as quickly as possible so that the plethora of information and full scope of the analysis can be engaged without loosing what was written in earlier pages. Do not expect any sort of 'traditional' work of history. This is for the students of American culture and anyone interested in the intricacies and complexities of the American identity. When you read this book, to a large extent you are learning about yourself.
Good on Media, Bad on History.......2005-09-12
Although he provides an in depth analysis of the modern media's role creating stereotypes of "non-whites", he actually attempts to say that this was the primary motivater to fight our "enemies" for centuries. This, of course, is nonsense. The Revolutionary War, Barbary Wars, War of 1812, World War I, and a large portion of World War II against the Rome-Berlin part of the Axis were against "white" people. And I'm probably missing other major conflicts.
Further, to say that America is unique among countries in using color or ethnicity to denigrate a people it is either at war with or has hostility towards is totally absurd. It's par for the course throughout the history of warfare and culture as a way to motivate its people to carry out and tolerate the acts of war. Unfortunately, he lets his biased political opinions biasedly spill into the pages of his book.
Nevertheless, he does an excellent job describing the power of the media to work as the Government's collective propaganda machine in their portrayal of the "eastern bloc" countries as the Cold War rose from the end of World War II.
Book Description
"The freshness of the authors' approaches . . . is salutary. . . . The collection is stimulating and valuable."—Joan Shelley Rubin, Journal of American History
Book Description
Conventional wisdom holds that television was a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that, through the influence of television, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period, Cold War, Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming.
To the unjaded viewership of Cold War America, the television set was not a harbinger of intellectual degradation and moral decay, but a thrilling new household appliance capable of bringing the wonders of the world directly into the home. The "cool medium" permeated the lives of every American, quickly becoming one of the most powerful cultural forces of the twentieth century. While television has frequently been blamed for spurring the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy, it was also the national stage upon which America witnessed -- and ultimately welcomed -- his downfall. In this provocative and nuanced cultural history, Doherty chronicles some of the most fascinating and ideologically charged episodes in television history: the warm-hearted Jewish sitcom The Goldbergs; the subversive threat from I Love Lucy; the sermons of Fulton J. Sheen on Life Is Worth Living; the anticommunist series I Led 3 Lives; the legendary jousts between Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy on See It Now; and the hypnotic, 188-hour political spectacle that was the Army-McCarthy hearings.
By rerunning the programs, freezing the frames, and reading between the lines, Cold War, Cool Medium paints a picture of Cold War America that belies many black-and-white clichés. Doherty not only details how the blacklist operated within the television industry but also how the shows themselves struggled to defy it, arguing that television was preprogrammed to reinforce the very freedoms that McCarthyism attempted to curtail.
Customer Reviews:
Superior Socio-Cultural History.......2006-05-22
The author should take a bow. He has written a wonderfully balanced, anecdotal-rich account of the simultaneous evolution of the Cold War, TV and political culture in the Age of McCarthy (which is, in all too many ways, an age we are still in.) That the junior senator from the cheeshead state was a craven opportunist is as well known now as it was even then, but what he exploited via the new electronic medium was the pervasive fear that subversion lurked behind every vacuum tube as well as behind every State Department desk.
Terrific.......2004-05-18
Cold War, Cool Medium is a terrific and compulsively readable study of McCarthyism in the context of the early history of television. Doherty astutely establishes the way televison worked in its formative days. Then he shows how its weaknesses aided in the rise of McCarthy and how both its strengths and weaknesses aided in his fall. Superb and easiy to read history.
Book Description
A hero to many, Polish writer Adam Michnik ranks among today's most fearless and persuasive public figures. His imprisonment by Poland's military regime in the 1980s did nothing to quench his outpouring of writings, many of which were published in English as Letters from Prison. Beginning where that volume ended, Letters from Freedom finds Michnik briefly in prison at the height of the "cold civil war" between authorities and citizens in Poland, then released. Through his continuing essays, articles, and interviews, the reader can follow all the momentous changes of the last decade in Poland and East-Central Europe. Some of the writings have appeared in English in various publications; most are translated here for the first time.
Michnik is never detached. His belief that people can get what they want without hatred and violence has always translated into action, and his actions, particularly the activity of writing, have required his contemporaries to think seriously about what it is they want. His commitment to freedom is absolute, but neither wild-eyed nor humorless; with a characteristic combination of idealism and pragmatism, Michnik says, "In the end, politics is the art of foreseeing and implementing the possible."
Michnik's blend of conviction and political acumen is perhaps most vividly revealed in the interviews transcribed in the book, whether he is the subject of the interview or is conducting a conversation with Czeslaw Milosz, Vacláv Havel, or Wojciech Jaruzelski. These face-to-face exchanges tell more about the forces at work in contemporary Eastern Europe than could any textbook. Sharing Michnik's intellectual journey through a tumultuous era, we touch on all the subjects important to him in this wide-ranging collection and find they have importance for everyone who values conscience and responsibility. In the words of Jonathan Schell, "Michnik is one of those who bring honor to the last two decades of the twentieth century."
Book Description
The Nuclear Borderlands explores the sociocultural fallout of twentieth-century America's premier technoscientific project--the atomic bomb. Joseph Masco offers the first anthropological study of the long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project for the people that live in and around Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb, and the majority of weapons in the current U.S. nuclear arsenal, were designed. Masco examines how diverse groups--weapons scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, neighboring Pueblo Indian Nations and Nuevomexicano communities, and antinuclear activists--have engaged the U.S. nuclear weapons project in the post-Cold War period, mobilizing to debate and redefine what constitutes "national security."
In a pathbreaking ethnographic analysis, Masco argues that the U.S. focus on potential nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War obscured the broader effects of the nuclear complex on American society. The atomic bomb, he demonstrates, is not just the engine of American technoscientific modernity; it has produced a new cognitive orientation toward everyday life, provoking cross-cultural experiences of what Masco calls a "nuclear uncanny." Revealing how the bomb has reconfigured concepts of time, nature, race, and citizenship, the book provides new theoretical perspectives on the origin and logic of U.S. national security culture. The Nuclear Borderlands ultimately assesses the efforts of the nuclear security state to reinvent itself in a post-Cold War world, and in so doing exposes the nuclear logic supporting the twenty-first-century U.S. war on terrorism.
Amazon.com
Paul Klebnikov tells the incredible story of Boris Berezovsky, a one-time Russian car dealer who assembled a huge--and illicit--fortune after the collapse of Communism. "This individual had risen out of nowhere to become the richest businessman in Russia and one of the most powerful individuals in the country," writes Klebnikov, a respected reporter for Forbes. "This is a story of corruption so profound that many readers might have trouble believing it." Yet Godfather of the Kremlin is a careful work of journalism in which Klebnikov documents the business dealings of a man who once bragged to the Financial Times that he and six other men controlled half of the Russian economy and rigged Boris Yeltsin's reelection in 1996. Berezovsky survived both an assassination attempt and a murder investigation, and paved the way to power for Vladimir Putin. He and the other crony capitalists of post-Soviet Russia like to rationalize their deeds, writes Klebnikov: "Whenever I asked Russia's business magnates about the orgy of crime produced by the market reforms, they invariably excused it by pointing to the robber barons of American capitalism. Russia's bandit capitalism was no different from American capitalism in the late nineteenth century, they argued." Yet nothing could be further from the truth: Carnegie, Rockefeller, and their peers transformed the United States into an economic superpower. Berezovsky, on the other hand, has "produced no benefit to Russia's consumers, industries, or treasury." It's not that he didn't have an opportunity. To pick one example among many, he took over Aeroflot when it had a monopoly position in a booming market. But the company barely grew, and instead experienced myriad problems. Berezovsky controlled many businesses, but he was a lousy business manager; his only authentic success--as an auto dealer--depended on collusion. His real skill is shady dealmaking, especially with corrupt government officials. That's the way to success in modern Russia, as this well-told but troubling book reveals. --John J. Miller
Book Description
Boris Berezovsky's business career has been meteoric. In just six years he managed to seize control of Russia's largest auto manufacturer, largest TV network, national airline, and one of the world's biggest oil companies. When Moscow's gangster families battled one another in the Great Mob War of 1993-1994, Berezovsky was in the thick of it. He was badly burned by a car bomb; his driver was decapitated. A year later, Berezovsky emerged as the prime suspect in the assassination of the director of the TV network he acquired. Although plagued by scandal, he enjoyed President Yeltsin's support, serving as the personal "financial advisor" to Yeltsin and his family. In 1996, Berezovsky organized the financing of Yeltsin's re-election campaign-a campaign marred by fraud, embezzlement, and attempted murder. Berezovsky became the president's most influential political advisor, playing a key role in forming governments and dismissing prime ministers. Having labored to privatize the economy, Berezovsky privatized the state. Based on hundreds of taped interviews with top businessmen and government officials, as well as on secret police reports, contractual documents, and surveillance tapes, Godfather of the Kremlin is both a gripping story and a unique historical document.
Customer Reviews:
The Deadly Truth........2007-05-23
I personally witnessed the outcomes of the corrupted rule of the culprits portrayed by late Paul Klebnikov.
Many Russians believe that the truths revealed in this book were the cause of author's murder.
Great insight for Americans.......2007-03-01
This book tells a powerful story that most Americans are, sadly, unfamiliar with. Mr. Klebnikov outlines in impressive detail the history of Russia during the very turbulent times of the 1990s. The development of gangster capitalism under the Yeltsin regime in an environment of political corruption was a tragic episode in Russian history and an example of an opportunity squandered. This book outlines the rise of the mafia in Russia in the post-glasnost time period and the links they had to the Chechens and to the political leaders of the time.
While I sometimes became a bit lost in all the details and Russian names with which I was unfamiliar, the story came through well as Mr. Klebnikov built, step-by-step, a solid and well-documented case. This story is an important one for Americans who wish to better understand what happened during this time period and how it affected, and still affects, Russia. From political assassinations to presidential elections - the book tells a compelling and sadly disturbing story.
Since I have several Russian friends, I felt I owed it to myself to become more familiar with recent Russian history. And this book did not let me down. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in understanding Russia better and I suspect it will in time become a classic for the detailed description it provides of this time period in Russian history.
Highly recommended!
Berezovsky & the Litvininenko Killing (Polonium).......2007-02-22
Everybody should read this book - it helps to put the entire Litvinenko killing in perspective ; the dead Russian spy worked for Berezovsky - given Berezovsky long criminal history it would not be surprising at all that he was directly involved in murdering his own employee as part of his long ongoing campaign to overthrow the democratically elected president Putin and thereby illegally regain control of all of Russia's natural resources including in particular Russia's oil and gas wealth.
His insight Got him Killed.......2007-01-04
Paul Klebnikov is a modern Russian hero. He was assasinated because he tried to show the world how corrupt Russia had become at the hands of the oligarchs. "The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism" is well written and organized. It follows not only the "rise" of Berezovsky but also illustrates how the majority of the Duma (Russian Congress) was in fact acting on behalf of the gangsters or were in fact gangsters themselves holding seats in the house.
It is a reavealing look into the saddest chapter of Russian history. A must read for anyone interested in politics or modern history. It is a shame and loss to us all that Paul was killed. Who knows what other truths he could have recovered had he lived. It is also a shame that in our modern age of information, only a few speak the truth - and if they speak to loudly they are silenced, as was Paul. May he rest in peace.
If you enjoyed this book, Paul also did an interview called "Theft of the century: Privatization and the looting of Russia." If you google it, you will find it on the net.
Telling The Truth Will Get You Murdered!.......2006-07-12
I am halfway through this incredible book and it deeply disturbs me that American Paul Klebnikov died because of this book and other articles he wrote while working in Russia for Forbes Magazine. Of late, all one reads is how someone incredibly powerful managed to get off the hook in one way or another. I am just weary of all the lies in the press and the deceitful 'spin' that the US media gives to people they find useful. No, we don't kill our reporters, but we ruin them in other ways. I hope I live long enough to see this change, but I fear it won't happen in my lifetime. I have learned from personal experiences in my life that 99 percent of what I have read and believed to be true was a lie. It starts with Santa Claus and moves on from there. This book has made me want to read more about Russia, the people, and the various governments. How sad I spent half of my life living in fear of the Russians, and they us. I tried to find 'Conversations With A Barbarian', also by Mr. Klebnikov, but it is no longer available. I feel so awful for his family and friends.
Average customer rating:
- BEWARE, YOU FIFTH COLUMN PINKOS!
- Nostalgic look at commie madness
- Interesting compilation of anti-Communist propaganda
- Trivializes the Real Dangers of Communism
- Explain the Gulag
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Red Scared!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture
Michael Barson , and
Steven Heller
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Communism & Socialism
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The Chicago Conspiracy Trial
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The Cold War: A History
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ASIN: 0811828875 |
Book Description
Not long ago, Communists seemed to be everywhere: among our politicians, neighbors, favorite actors--even in our drinking water. Red Scared! is a wry tour of the frosty decades of Soviet and American adversity, when anti-Communist hysteria produced fairly hysterical pop-culture items. The voluminous propaganda that the United States produced to combat the Red Menace--not only officially, but in books, films, magazines, games, and more--is explored and vibrantly reproduced here. With a colorful text that serves as a useful historical overview, daring tales from government agents, plot synopses and lurid covers of unintentionally funny pulp novels, and much more, Red Scared! brings the Cold War back home again--this time around with humor (and relief)
Customer Reviews:
BEWARE, YOU FIFTH COLUMN PINKOS!.......2005-03-04
This is a highly entertaining little book. Our feelings about Russia and China have changed so much that seeing this overheated, red-baiting material is a shock. But it was a daily reality at mid-century. This book is copiously illustrated with photos, newspaper clippings, book covers and even "If the Devil Would Talk," the virulently anti-Communist comic book published by the Catholic Church in the 1950's. You won't go wrong with this one.
Nostalgic look at commie madness.......2004-02-25
I bought RED SCARED! several months ago, but idiotically shelved it for a long time. Finally I read it and regreted to have waited for so long reading it, because this book is fun.
RED SCARED! THE COMMIE MENACE IN PROPAGANDA AND POPULAR CULTURE details in an amusing way the troubled USA/USSR relation and the impact the cold war and the communist hysteria had on popular culture.
Beginning with the first red scare in the US in 1919, when a series of bomb explosions led to the deportation of 250 alien radicals, RED SCARED! explores the relation between Soviet Russia and the United States, from the alliance in the second world war to the cold war with its various conflicts. The focus however is on the influence of politics on popular culture and how changes in the political climate were reflected in mass media. Lavishly illustrated, never academic, written in a witty style, RED SCARED! entertains as well as educates.
Movies, TV-shows, novels, comics, pamphlets - all mass media felt the impact of the cold war. You surely know the charming film NINOTCHKA starring Greta GARBO or Stanley KUBRICK's Dr. STRANGELOVE but have you also heard about I MARRIED A COMMUNIST, INVASION USA, THE GIRL IN THE KREMLIN or I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI? Or did you know that John WAYNE once played an HUAC investigator, examining red un-American activities on the beautiful island of Hawaii (BIG JIM MCCLAIN, USA 1952)? All the above mentioned films and many more are presented with hugely interesting rare stills, lobby cards and posters. Capsule reviews are provided as well. The authors also discuss the successful TV series I LED THREE LIVES. Debuting in 1953 this 117 episode series about an undercover agent infiltrating a communist cell ran until 1956.
Impressive illustrations feature comics (my favorite being a horror comic titled THE RUSSIAN DEVIL, where a demonic looking kommissar digs a corpse up from a frozen grave, while the balloon above the evil red reads: "Get up, Ivan! You can't escape us by dying! We're not thru with you yet!") and lurid pulp paperback novels (RED RAPE). There's also an excerpt from a trashy Mickey SPILLANE mystery, where private eye Mike HAMMER battles the reds. There were even romance comics concerning the cold war ("THE ROMANTIC CURTAIN")!!! Other chapters revolve around red-baiter and FBI boss J. Edgar HOOVER, the sputnik shock, mind-boggling quotes from political pamphlets and anti-Communist bubble-gum cards (!)
RED SCARED! is an hugely entertaining time capsule ride. However it is not without flaws: Author Michael BARSON wrote a similar book in 1992 (BETTER DEAD THAN RED! A NOSTALGIC LOOK AT THE GOLDEN YEARS OF RUSSIAPHOBIA, RED-BAITING, AND OTHER COMMIE MADNESS) and he uses some of the material again. Several of the illustrations and stories looked quite familiar to me.
I also found it disappointing that several topics are only briefly touched upon or barely mentioned. For instance I would have liked to read more about the HUAC investigations of Hollywood.
Nonetheless is RED SCARED! essential reading for history buffs and people with interest in popular culture.
Interesting compilation of anti-Communist propaganda.......2003-03-13
As the title suggests, this book deals with propaganda aimed at fighting the "Red Menace" (i.e. communism). Starting with the beginning of the Soviet state and going all through the Cold War, the authors, using a tongue-in-cheek style, show the variety methods used in the US to get the anti-communist message across. These methods ranged from pamphlets and posters to magazine articles and comic books. The book's only serious problem is the downplaying of how much of a menace the communist world was (and still is in the case of North Korea and the other Red holdouts).
Trivializes the Real Dangers of Communism.......2003-03-05
The political cartoons published here would make this book worth five points. The political analysis given would make it worth zero. Hence the average is 3. As is the case with most liberals, the author Barson is blind to the nature of Communism and only condemns what he considers the "hysteria" produced by anti-Communism. This is rather like warning people to be afraid of firefighters and firetrucks while saying nothing about the dangers of house fires with people inside. Barson even asserts that the fear of Communism almost destroyed American free speech. That is utter nonsense. And, far from being a time of hysteria, the Fifties were a relatively quiet time in US history. Anyway, since when is fear of a mortal enemy a form of hysteria? Typical of liberals, Barson has more concern about McCarthyism, under which not a single person died than he does of Communism, under which tens of millions were murdered. And the involvement of Communists (mostly covert ones) in the US is well documented. The Hollywood Left is well known to this day. And it was the extensive network of Communists and fellow travelers in Roosevelt's administration that allowed Roosevelt to call Stalin "Uncle Joe" and to subject Poland and the other eastern European nations to a half-century of servitude under the Soviet Union. The chief flaw of McCarthyism was the fact that it came at least twenty years too late. One of the cartoons shows Nikita Kruschev saying "We will bury you." Does Barson suppose that Kruschev was only kidding? After all, to Barson, the threat of Communism was only imaginary.
Explain the Gulag.......2002-08-05
This text is a concerted effort to trivialize the opposition to the ruthless totalitarian system that took more than 100 million lives. Documents now available show that Lenin created the police state, which was imitated by Mao and Pol Pot. Readers are advised to read Gulag Archipeligo to find out what Communism was.
Barson and Heller would like us to forget the thousands of missiles created destroy not only America but the entire West
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