Red Reckoning - by Mark Boulton & Tobias T Gibson (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Cold War still casts a long shadow over contemporary American society. It was a transformative era that continues to condition Americans' national anxieties, popular culture, consumer habits, and identity. The essays in "Red Reckoning" take an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to examine how the great ideological conflict of the twentieth century impacted American society. While historians and political scientists have explored Cold War American culture in numerous monographs on individual subjects, this collection analyzes the myriad ways the conflict forced Americans to reconsider almost every aspect of their society, culture, and identity. The essays included are lively, engaging, and cover subjects that will interest students and scholars of post-1945 United States History. They should also appeal to readers wishing to understand modern America's political, legal, and cultural foundations. The subjects include the Cold War's impact on the national security state, race relations, gun culture and masculinity, law, college football, advertising, music, film, free speech, religion, and even board games. Contributing scholars include Tony Shaw, the leading scholar on American Cold War movies, and Elaine Tyler May, whose Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988) redefined our understanding of Cold War family dynamics. "Red Reckoning" offers readers an immersion into what it was like to live through the Cold War, revealing a society that was evolving in the ways it consumed media and entertainment and reacted to the infrastructures, cultural mores, and the rise of a national security state necessary to win the conflict. The first section of the volume explores the Cold War's impact on the legal and structural contours of American life. Section two examines how the Cold War affected identity by forcing Americans to reconsider notions of racial inclusiveness, gender norms, and religiosity. Section three analyzes the production and consumption of popular culture and demonstrates how the conflict transformed movies, literature, music, and sports, making them key components in the ideological battle against communism"--

Book Synopsis

Though it ended more than thirty years ago, the Cold War still casts a long shadow over American society. Red Reckoning examines how the great ideological conflict of the twentieth century transformed the nation and forced Americans to reconsider almost every aspect of their society, culture, and identity.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the volume's contributors examine a broad array of topics, including the Cold War's impact on national security, race relations, gun culture and masculinity, law, college football, advertising, music, film, free speech, religion, and even board games. Above all, Red Reckoning brings a vitally important era back to life for those who lived through it and for students and scholars wishing to understand it.

Review Quotes

"[A] composite snapshot that reveals how, between 1945 and 1990, Cold War military and geopolitical realities shaped everyday American life, including aspects of it that historians might be tempted to dismiss as trivial. . . . Red Reckoning challenge stereotyped narratives and illuminate underexplored aspects of this fascinating period in American history. Because they are digestible, informative, and frequently entertaining, they would be useful in an undergraduate course about American culture and society during the Cold War."--Journal of American History

"Editors Boulton and Gibson have assembled fifteen short, crisp chapters from scholars in several disciplines and sorted them according to three major themes: 'Structure and Society, ' 'Creating a Cold War Identity, ' and 'Culture and Popular Entertainment.' The result is a wide-ranging picture of the Cold War in the United States as a totalizing, inescapable domestic experience. . . . [This collection is] fruitful and fascinating, offering up a panoply of new angles on an already rich field."--Journal of Southern History

"Through this collection of essays, Boulton and Gibson elaborate on the Cold War's pervasive impact on American culture and society. . . . Most essays will be accessible to a general adult public, i.e., readers who will enjoy the detailed stories of Cold War life; other essays target a more academic audience. Regardless of background, readers will find these essays useful in analyzing a complicated era. As a whole, Red Reckoning sheds new light on the Cold War, prompting many questions and suggesting even deeper research. Recommended."--CHOICE

"Red Reckoning offers a refreshing and multidisciplinary examination of the Cold War era. The edited volume engages with several areas in the social sciences and humanities. While the general tone of international politics and history is the foundation of the book, there are significant essays that address legal studies, national security, race, gender studies, sports, music history, and several other cultural phenomena. This book paints the larger picture of American life that was shaped by Cold War international politics. Essays from this book could be used in a variety of courses across disciplines, but this would be a fantastic main text for a class on the history of the Cold War or an interdisciplinary course that examined the Cold War time period."--Michael Rudy, associate professor of political science

"Red Reckoning assembles a remarkable set of authors and essays--provocative, bold, controversial, and enlightening--which suggest how much the Cold War changed America."--Thomas A. Schwartz, author of Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography

"Red Reckoning carefully explains how the military, economic, informational, and diplomatic perils of the struggles between the world's superpowers impacted domestic policy and family structures. I highly recommend it."--Maj. Gen. Byron S. Bagby (retired), former operations director of Joint Force Command Brunssum (NATO) and chief of staff for US Army, Europe

"Red Reckoning is an excellent catalyst for revisiting so much of what the Cold War altered about American life and discussing how these changes now influence our present politics."--Jack Adam MacLennan, assistant professor of political science and graduate program director for National Security Studies at Park University

"By examining the Cold War's impact on U.S. society, Red Reckoning helps illustrate the degree to which our rights, laws, government policies, social culture, entertainment, and even our national identity were transformed by Cold War fears and assumptions."--Ralph G. Carter, author of Essentials of U.S. Foreign Policy Making

"The unsuspected corners of American society that this book explores make Red Reckoning a volume to savor."--Stephen J. Whitfield, author of The Culture of the Cold War

About the Author

Mark Boulton is the Harry S. Truman Fellow and professor of history at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and the author of Failing Our Veterans: The G.I. Bill and the Vietnam Generation.

Tobias T. Gibson is the Dr. John Langton Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.