Menu
Idea

Cold War

633
View on Map
Filter by:

Filter by published date

The flags of the USA and the USSR.

Cold War Tones

Two books that remind us that tone and timbre, musical style and sound, matter to history.
by Michael J. Kramer via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on July 28, 2024
Closed fist with faces of Judith Shklar, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Lionel Trilling

Cold War Liberalism Is Still With Us. Is That a Good Thing?

A scholarly roundtable on Samuel Moyn's new book.
by Jan-Werner Müller, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Nicolas Guilhot, Penny Marie von Eschen, Vaughn Rasberry via The Chronicle of Higher Education on October 2, 2023
A pole vaulter pointing the end of the pole at the camera.
partner

Pole Vaulting Over the Iron Curtain

When it became clear that the United States and its allies couldn’t “liberate” Eastern Europe through psychological war and covert ops, they turned to sports.
by Matthew Wills, Toby Rider, Kevin Witherspoon via JSTOR Daily on May 12, 2023
JFK and Jacqueline in the convertible limousine in Dallas.

A Weekend in Dallas

Revisiting political assassinations.
by Noah Kulwin via noahkulwin.substack on November 22, 2022
Checkpoint Charlie, seen from West Berlin in 1960.

The Disastrous Return of Cold War Strategy

Hal Brands urges the U.S. to make China and Russia “pay exorbitantly” for their policies. History shows that has never worked.
by Jordan Michael Smith via The New Republic on March 10, 2022
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping walking down a red carpet past a row of Chinese military guards.

Can Cold War History Prevent U.S.-Chinese Calamity?

Learning the right lessons of the past.
by Odd Arne Westad, Li Chen via Foreign Affairs on November 29, 2021
Ronald Reagan and popular musicians from 1980s, black and white collage with colorful shapes

I Want My Mutually Assured Destruction

How 1980s MTV helped my students understand the Cold War.
by Tom Nichols via The Atlantic on May 8, 2021
Gail "Hal" Halvorsen interacts with children in West Berlin
partner

How a Cold War Airlift Saved Berlin With Food, Medicine and Chocolate

A Soviet blockade around Berlin cut the city off from the West. But in 1948 U.S. and British pilots began to fly food, fuel and medicine to the Allied sectors.
via Retro Report on April 4, 2021
illustration of boy playing Cold War video game

First-Person Shooter Ideology

The cultural contradictions of Call of Duty.
by Daniel Bessner via The Drift on February 2, 2021
Sidney Hook speaking at the opening session of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin on June 26, 1950.

Is Science Political?

Many take the separation between science and politics for granted, but this view of science has its own political origins.
by Michael D. Gordin via Boston Review on August 20, 2019

Banking on the Cold War

The Cold War says more about how U.S. elites imagined their “freedom” than it does about enabling other people to be free.
by Nikhil Pal Singh via Boston Review on March 14, 2019

The Lethal Crescent

The 45 years of peace between the Cold War superpowers were 45 years of killing for much of the rest of the world.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The Nation on December 20, 2018

Goodbye, Cold War

For the first time, we are living in a truly post-cold-war political environment in the United States.
by Aziz Rana via n+1 on November 30, 2018
Zbigniew Brzezinski

Less Than Grand Strategy

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Cold War.
by Andrew J. Bacevich via The Nation on November 21, 2018

The World the Cold War Built

A new book says the conflict began in the late 19th century and subsumed even World War II as our defining event.
by Leon Hadar via The American Conservative on January 31, 2018

Operation Mongoose: The Story of America's Efforts to Overthrow Castro

And how they helped seal America’s fate in Vietnam.
by Max Boot via The Atlantic on January 5, 2018

Our Cold War World

How the contest between capitalism and communism shaped world politics—and defines today’s inequalities.
by Patrick Iber via The New Republic on October 30, 2017

The U.S. Contemplated a Nuclear Confrontation in North Korea in 1953.

The Trump Administration can - and should - learn from that moment.
by David E. Kaiser via Made By History on April 14, 2017

The World Almost Ended One Week in 1983

In 1983, the U.S. simulated a nuclear war with Russia—and narrowly avoided starting a real one. We might not be so lucky next time.
by Nate Jones, J. Peter Scoblic via Slate on April 13, 2017
Cover of the U.S. Physical Fitness Program book, featuring silhouettes of people doing calisthenics.
partner

Run DNC, Run RNC

When the federal government began to claim a stake in the public’s physical fitness, and the origins of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.
via BackStory on July 10, 2015
Southdale mall

How the Cold War Shaped the Design of American Malls

America's first mall was designed as an insular utopia, providing shelter and a controlled environment during uncertain times.
by Marni Epstein-Mervis via Curbed on June 11, 2014
"Sunrise at Northport Harbor" painting by Arthur Dove.

Unpopular Front

American art and the Cold War.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on October 9, 2005
Phil Donahue.

Phil Donahue’s Cold War Legacy

The late telejournalist was a pioneer of informal diplomacy between American and Soviet citizens.
by Adriel Kasonta via The American Conservative on September 25, 2024
Ronald Reagan

What If Ronald Reagan’s Presidency Never Really Ended?

Anti-Trump Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump’s opposite—yet in critical ways Reagan may have been his forerunner.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on September 9, 2024
Communist Party USA members march for unemployed relief during the Great Depression in San Francisco.

Bring American Communists Out of the Shadows — and Closets

In the 20th century, American Communists were seen as an enemy within. In reality, they were ordinary people with complex lives that deserve to be chronicled.
by David Bacon via Jacobin on August 15, 2024
Still from the film 'Red Dawn" showing three men holding rifles and binoculars.
partner

Why 1984's 'Red Dawn' Still Matters

By framing the U.S. as a victim, 'Red Dawn' obscured U.S. aggression in Latin America and elsewhere.
by Michelle D. Paranzino via Made by History on August 9, 2024
President Eisenhower sitting beside President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, September 26, 1960

The Foreign Policy Mistake the U.S. Keeps Repeating in the Middle East

In 2024, the U.S. faces some of the same challenges in the region that it did in 1954.
by Jordan Michael Smith via The New Republic on August 2, 2024
NATO leaders in the 1950s sitting together at a conference.

Ill-Suited to Reality: NATO’s Delusions

It has suddenly become popular to cast NATO as the first benign military alliance in history, without concealed politics.
by Tom Stevenson via London Review of Books on July 25, 2024
A collection of supplies inside of a fallout shelter.

Nine Hot Weeks, with Misgivings

Cataloguing basement fallout shelters in the summer of 1967.
by Monte Davis via 3 Quarks Daily on July 16, 2024
A column of Soviet armored vehicles arrives to reinforce the military presence in Kabul on Jan. 30, 1980.

The Forgotten World War III Scare of 1980

Moscow and Washington trapped themselves in a cycle of fear over Iran.
by James M. Acton, Nicole Grajewski via Foreign Policy on June 9, 2024
View More
30 of
633

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History