Overview
"Hours after the USSR collapsed in 1991, Congress began making plans to establish the official memory of the Cold War. Conservatives dominated the proceedings, spending millions to portray the conflict as a triumph of good over evil and a defeat of totalitarianism equal in significance to World War II. In this provocative book, historian Jon Wiener visits Cold War monuments, museums, and memorials across the United States to find out how the era is being remembered. The author's journey provides a history of the Cold War, one that turns many conventional notions on their heads. In an engaging travelogue that takes readers to sites such as the life-size recreation of Berlin's ""Checkpoint Charlie"" at the Reagan Library, the fallout shelter display at the Smithsonian, and exhibits about ""Sgt. Elvis,"" America's most famous Cold War veteran, Wiener discovers that the Cold War isn't being remembered. It's being forgotten. Despite an immense effort, the conservatives' monuments weren't built, their historic sites have few visitors, and many of their museums have now shifted focus to other topics. Proponents of the notion of a heroic ""Cold War victory"" failed; the public didn't buy the official story. Lively, readable, and well-informed, this book expands current discussions about memory and history, and raises intriguing questions about popular skepticism toward official ideology."
Full Product Details
Author: Jon Wiener
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 3.00cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.635kg
ISBN: 9780520271418
ISBN 10: 0520271416
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 15 October 2012
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
As popular reading, it's got the humor and wit of Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation and James Loewen's Sundown Towns and DJ Waldie's Holy Land. By which I mean it's witty and kinda mean, and exhilarating bad fun. --Oc Weekly: Orange County News, Arts & Ent
As popular reading, it's got the humor and wit of Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation and James Loewen's Sundown Towns and DJ Waldie's Holy Land. By which I mean it's witty and kinda mean, and exhilarating bad fun. -- Andrew Tonkovich Oc Weekly: Orange County News, Arts & Ent 20121014 Wiener's wit and deft grasp of geopolitics make for one of the season's most intriguing historical books. -- Andrew Milner Philadelphia City Paper 20121011 Who knew the Cold War was funny? Wiener's adventures in American historical memory are surprisingly lively. -- Sarah Rothbard Zocalo Public Square 20121009 A provocative and fascinating new book. -- Andrew Gumbel Los Angeles Review Of Books 20121117 A political argument masquerading as a travel yarn... Wiener's accounts of his trips to nuclear test sites, missile-launching control centers and fallout shelter exhibits contrast the guides' cheerful patter with the prospect of Armageddon. -- Joshua Hammer New York Times Book Review 20121202 A splendid tour de farce of the museums and other memory palaces established largely by the American right in honor of the greatest triumph in human history, the winning of the... oh, remind me, what was it? Tomdispatch 20130115 ...An account of memory laced with irony and wit... -- Kevin Temple The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture 20140126
As popular reading, it's got the humor and wit of Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation and James Loewen's Sundown Towns and DJ Waldie's Holy Land. By which I mean it's witty and kinda mean, and exhilarating bad fun. --Oc Weekly: Orange County News, Arts & Ent Wiener's wit and deft grasp of geopolitics make for one of the season's most intriguing historical books. --Philadelphia City Paper Who knew the Cold War was funny? Wiener's adventures in American historical memory are surprisingly lively. --Zocalo Public Square A provocative and fascinating new book. --Los Angeles Review of Books A political argument masquerading as a travel yarn... Wiener's accounts of his trips to nuclear test sites, missile-launching control centers and fallout shelter exhibits contrast the guides' cheerful patter with the prospect of Armageddon. --New York Times Book Review
Author Information
Jon Wiener is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Among his books are Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files (UC Press) and Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud and Politics in the Ivory Tower.
