Cold War — Bunk History

Viewing 451–480 of 793 results. Go to first page

David Dobson with scientific equipment.

Nuclear Proliferation and the “Nth Country Experiment”

A mid-1960s “do-it-yourself” project produced “credible nuclear weapon” design from open sources.

by William Burr via National Security Archive on January 23, 2025

Trump holding an American flag crowded with extra stars.

What the History of American Expansion Can Tell Us About Trump’s Threats

A historian of U.S. empire discusses nuclear Greenland, selling Puerto Rico, and the renaissance of William McKinley.

by Daniel Immerwahr, Tim Murphy via Mother Jones on January 15, 2025

Noam Chomsky illustration by Joe Ciardiello.

The Worlds of Noam Chomsky

If ordinary Americans know one critic of the American Empire, it’s almost certainly Chomsky.

by Daniel Bessner via The Nation on January 13, 2025

Mugshots of Ethel Rosenberg in 1951.

President Biden Should Pardon Ethel Rosenberg

A newly released classified document shows that the National Security Agency knew Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy—and that the government executed her anyway.

by Phillip Deery via The Nation on January 2, 2025

Jimmy Carter in the 1970s visiting a town in Brazil that commemorates Confederate expats.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

As an individual, Jimmy Carter stood as a rebuke to our venal and heartless political class. As a politician, his private virtues proved to be public vices.

by Tim Barker via Origins of Our Time on January 1, 2025

Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Jimmy Carter Was No Friend of Union Workers Like Me

As a worker in the 1970s, I looked forward to a Jimmy Carter administration. By the end of his term in office, I felt betrayed.

by Chris Townsend via Jacobin on December 29, 2024

Donald Trump wearing a MAGA hat.

The Panama Question

Trump’s canal comments resurrect a forgotten American interest.

by Joseph Addington via The American Conservative on December 29, 2024

Rod Serling giving his opening monologue on "The Twilight Zone."

Rod Serling on Doomsday

Marking the centenary of the creator of “The Twilight Zone,” who knew that dystopia was always over the nearest ridge.

by Carly Mattox via Mubi on December 25, 2024

Image of classified documents and Russia and US leaders shaking hands.

A Newly Declassified Memo Sheds Light on America’s Post-Cold War Mistakes

This remarkably prescient document holds several lessons about how to run foreign policy.

by Fred Kaplan via Slate on December 23, 2024

A drawing of the book "Fat is a Feminist Issue" by Susie Orbach with a magnifying glass in front of it.

Was “Fat Is a Feminist Issue” Liberating? Or Weight-Loss Propaganda?

Susie Orbach’s 1978 book is a fascinating snapshot of diet and physical culture in a very different era.

by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela via The New Republic on December 5, 2024

Soldiers and a tank, a Defense department seal, and Pete Hegseth.

Bring Back the War Department

If you want a clear strategy for winning wars, don’t play a semantic game with the name of the department that’s charged with the strategy’s execution.

by Elliot Ackerman via The Atlantic on December 5, 2024

Donald Trump and RFK Jr. shaking hands.

The Magic Thinking of Kennedy-ism

The hero worship of the family of American royalty has a dark side: a tendency toward conspiracism that fits with the MAGA movement.

by Rick Perlstein via The American Prospect on December 5, 2024

A still of Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan overlaid on the seal of the United States.

The Thin Line Between Biopic and Propaganda

The success of “Reagan” reflects the market demands of a more fragmented moviegoing public—and reality.

by Zach Schonfeld via The Atlantic on November 18, 2024

Berkeley students and protesters gather during a protest and celebration at Berkeley, California in 1969.

The Left’s Reversal on Free Speech

Historically, liberals defended the First Amendment and our free speech rights. Now, too many on the left seek to undermine constitutional protections.

by Patrick M. Garry via Law & Liberty on November 18, 2024

The cover of "Martian Time-Slip," featuring a man tending to a farm on Mars.

“Multiple Worlds Vying to Exist”: Philip K. Dick and Palestine

A critique of colonialism from Martian science fiction.

by Jonathan Lethem via The Paris Review on November 14, 2024

Call of Duty: Pentagon Ops

Inside the weird synergies that launched the videogaming industry—and made the Pentagon fantasies in Call of Duty its stock in trade.

by Jesse Robertson via The Nation on October 24, 2024

Senator J.D. Vance and Patrick Deneen at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Toward a Christian Postliberal Left

A truly Christian postliberalism would imagine and enact an alternative modernity with a different standard of progress.

by Eugene McCarraher via Commonweal on October 22, 2024

Ronald Reagan preparing for a broadcast on Voice of America.

Whose Ronald Reagan?

Fighting over the legacy of a conservative hero in the era of Trump.

by Susan B. Glasser via Foreign Affairs on October 22, 2024

Korean War U.S Army helicopter and soldiers about to board.

The Korean War and Mismanaging Protracted Conflict

History can make the U.S. better prepared for the specter of protracted large-scale ground combat, which has grown more real in the wake of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

by Andrew J. Forney via Texas National Security Review on October 14, 2024

Photographs of historian Zachary Schrag and his father Philip Schrag in front of a Nuclear War plan background

Two Generations of Nuclear Hopes and Nuclear Fears

A conversation with historian Zachary Schrag and his father Philip Schrag about their multi-generational encounters with nuclear threats.

by Alex Wellerstein via Doomsday Machines on October 4, 2024

Battleship NEW YORK at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard dry dock, Bremerton, Washington, 1914

Postcolonial Pacific: The Story of Philippine Seattle

The growth of Seattle in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is inseparable from the arrival of laborers from the US-colonized Philippines.

by H. M. A. Leow, Dorothy Fujita-Rony via JSTOR Daily on September 29, 2024

Empty speech bubbles emanating from people in an old house.

Popular History

What role do we really want history to be playing in our public life? And is the history we have actually doing that work?

by Scott Spillman via The Point on September 29, 2024

Henry Kissinger

Who Wanted to Kill Henry Kissinger?

Newly-released FBI files show a lot of strange threats against the former secretary of state’s safety—and say a lot about 1970s America.

by Matthew Petti via Reason on September 18, 2024

LBJ and his cabinet in Washington, DC (1963).

Two Forms of American Liberalism

Although the American tradition is broadly liberal, it is best understood as divided between two schools: classical and managerial liberalism.

by Matt Wolfson via Law & Liberty on September 18, 2024

Martin Luther King Jr. speaking to an anti-Vietnam War rally in 1967.

The Anti-War Political Tradition: An Introduction

Anti-war politics has a rich historical tradition, one that seems to be in desperate need of revival.

by Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via Foreign Exchanges on September 17, 2024

Vietnamese refugees preparing to evacuate a village during an American air raid.

The End of a Village

Jonathan Schell’s account of the US military’s destruction of the village of Ben Suc in Vietnam laid bare the problem with many American interventions.

by Wallace Shawn via New York Review of Books on September 12, 2024

Physicists posing in front of a 60-inch cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1944.

How Professors Helped Win World War II

College professors were vital in the fight to win WWII, lending their time and research to building bombs to creating effective wartime propaganda.

by Will Mari via The Saturday Evening Post on September 4, 2024

Two drawn caricatures of Ronald Reagan's face.

I’m a Historian of the ’80s. I Cannot Tell You How Bizarre the New Ronald Reagan Movie Is.

There’s hagiography, then there’s...whatever this is.

by Paul M. Renfro via Slate on September 3, 2024

Richard Nixon gestures toward George Meany during a speech at the 1971 AFL-CIO convention.

How the “AFL-CIA” Undermined Labor Movements Abroad

During the Cold War, the AFL-CIO actively participated in efforts to suppress left-wing labor movements abroad.

by Jeff Schuhrke, Cal Turner, Sara Van Horn via Jacobin on September 2, 2024

Alexander Hamilton, with superimposed map of Atlantic world.

The Return of Hamiltonian Statecraft

A grand strategy for a turbulent world.

by Walter Russell Mead via Foreign Affairs on August 20, 2024

brought to you by

© Bunk History