Description:
A collection of the work of some of the best cultural critics writing about the period, American Literature and Culture in an Age of Cold War reveals a broad range of ways that American cultural production from the late 1940s to the present might be understood in relation to the Cold War. Critically engaging the reigning paradigms that equate postwar U.S. culture with containment culture, the authors present suggestive revisionist claims. Their essays draw on a literary archive--including the works of John Updike, Joan Didion, Richard E. Kim, Allen Ginsberg, Edwin Denby, Alice Childress, Frank Herbert, and others--strikingly different from the one typically presented in accounts of the period.
Review Quotes:
"A watershed moment in the current revitalization of Cold War studies. The editors have brought together a strong group of cultural critics to revise and extend the insights of the foundational 'containment culture' work of Thomas Schaub, Alan Nadel, and Ellen Schrecker. From its rereadings of figures we thought we knew, to its reconsiderations of concepts we thought we'd mastered, to Nadel's own revisitation and extension of his work, this book will help those of us in English, American studies, cultural studies, history, and sociology who thought we knew the Cold War to think again."--Samuel Cohen, author, After the End of History