How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey Across America (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520271418)

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.



Author: Jon Wiener
ISBN-10: 0520271416
ISBN-13: 9780520271418
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 10/15/2012
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.25h x 6.30w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 12/02/2012 pg. 41