Uncertain Empire

American History and the Idea of the Cold War

Edited by Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell

Leading scholars debating the meaning of the cold war in provocative, interdisciplinary essays
An introduction to the rapidly expanding field of cold war studies

Uncertain Empire

American History and the Idea of the Cold War

Edited by Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell

Description

Historians have long understood that the notion of "the cold war" is richly metaphorical, if not paradoxical. The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union was a war that fell ambiguously short of war, an armed truce that produced considerable bloodshed. Yet scholars in the rapidly expanding field of Cold War studies have seldom paused to consider the conceptual and chronological foundations of the idea of the Cold War itself. This stands in contrast to the study of other historical epochs that are governed by grand but ambivalent rubrics: the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, or the Industrial Revolution. In Uncertain Empire, a group of leading scholars takes up the challenge of making sense of the idea of the Cold War and its application to the writing of American history. They interrogate the concept from a wide range of disciplinary vantage points; the scope of these different positions illustrates the diversity of methods and approaches in contemporary Cold War studies. Among the disciplines on which the book draws are diplomatic history, the history of science, literary criticism, cultural history, and the history of religion.

Animating the volume as a whole is a question about the extent to which the Cold War was an American invention. Essays look at the Cold War as in need of a rigorous re-centering, after a decade in which historians have introduced expansive global and transnational perspectives on the conflict; as a uniquely American ideological project designed to legitimize the pursuit of an ambitious geopolitical agenda; as a geopolitical and transnational phenomenon; and other approaches. Uncertain Empire brings these debates into focus, and offers students of the Cold War a new framework for considering recent developments in the scholarship.

Uncertain Empire

American History and the Idea of the Cold War

Edited by Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell

Introduction, Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell
Part I: Prisms
1. Cold War Degree Zero, Anders Stephanson
2. Exploring the Histories of the Cold War: A Pluralist Approach, Odd Arne Westad
3. A History Best Served Cold, Philip Mirowski
4. Inventing Other Realities: What the Cold War Means for Literary Studies, Steven Belletto
Part II: Vistas
5. The Geopolitical Vision: The Myth of an Outmatched U.S.A., John Thompson
6. War Envy and Amnesia: American Cold War Rewrites of Russia's War, Ann Douglas
7. The Spirit of Democracy: Religious Liberty and American Anti-Communism during the Cold War, Andrew Preston
8. God, the Bomb, and the Cold War: The Religious and Ethical Debate Over Nuclear Weapons, 1945-1960, Paul S. Boyer
9. Blues Under Siege: Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, and the Idea of America, Daniel Matlin
10. Cold War Culture and the Lingering Myth of Sacco and Vanzetti, Moshik Temkin
11. Deconstructing "Cold War Anthropology", Peter Mandler
12. Cognitive and Perceptual Training in the Cold War Man-Machine System, Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi
Index

Uncertain Empire

American History and the Idea of the Cold War

Edited by Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell

Author Information

Edited by Joel Isaac, Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge, and Duncan Bell, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge

Joel Issac is Faculty of History, University of Cambridge Duncan Bell is Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge

Contributors:

Duncan Bell, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Christ's College
Steven Belletto, Assistant Professor of English, Lafayette College
Paul S. Boyer, Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ann Douglas, Parr Professor of Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Sharon Ghamari, Independent Scholar
Joel Isaac, Lecturer in the History of Modern Political Thought, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Christ's College
Peter Mandler, Professor of Modern Cultural History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College
Dan Matlin, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Queen Mary, University of London, and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge
Philip Mirowski, Carl Koch Professor of Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame
Andrew Preston, Senior Lecturer in American History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Clare College
Anders Stephanson, Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Professor of History, Columbia University
Moshik Temkin, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
John Thompson, Reader Emeritus in American History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St. Catherine's College
Odd Arne Westad, Professor of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science

Uncertain Empire

American History and the Idea of the Cold War

Edited by Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell

Reviews and Awards

"A model for an edited volume. Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell, the volume's editors, aim not to criticize existing Cold War scholarship, but rather to open new avenues of inquiry and perhaps reinvigorate what is already a very large and rich field. That is because, while there is no shortage of writing on the topic, there is a surprising lack of attention to its meaning." - Gretchen Heefner, Reviews in American History

"Uncertain Empire is that rarity: a collection of essays that works as seamlessly and to as great effect as a single-authored work. From its comprehensive introduction through the incisive analyses by some of the most interesting historians of the Cold War, Isaac and Bell have assembled a rich and multi-faceted exploration of their subject. In their hands, the Cold War becomes a lens through which to examine American history itself." - Marilyn Young, New York University

"These are stimulating think pieces from a multidisciplinary perspective." - CHOICE

"Thought-provoking. An impressively wide-ranging and exceptionally coherent collection that simultaneously clarifies, problematizes, and advances our understanding of the United States and the Cold War." - Hugh Wilford, Journal of American History