How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America [Paperback]

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 authors 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 Berlins Checkpoint Charlie at the Reagan Library, the fallout shelter display at the Smithsonian, and exhibits about Sgt. Elvis, Americas most famous Cold War veteran, Wiener discovers that the Cold War isnt being remembered. Its being forgotten. Despite an immense effort, the conservatives monuments werent 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 didnt 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.

Jon Wieneris Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Among his books areGimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files(UC Press) andHistorians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud and Politics in the Ivory Tower.

Heres a book that would've split the sides of Thucydides. Wieners magical mystery tour of Cold War museums is simultaneously hilarious and the best thing ever written on public history and its contestation. Mike Davis, author ofCity of Quartz



Jon Wiener, an astute observerl³.