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Gail "Hal" Halvorsen interacts with children in West Berlin
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How a Cold War Airlift Saved Berlin With Food, Medicine and Chocolate

A Soviet blockade around Berlin cut the city off from the West. But in 1948 U.S. and British pilots began to fly food, fuel and medicine to the Allied sectors.
via Retro Report on March 20, 2025
President Jimmy Carter seated in the Oval Office of the White House, 1980.

How Jimmy Carter Became a Cold War Hawk

Jimmy Carter is associated with an idealistic “human rights agenda.” In reality, he was paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s aggressive anti-communism.
by Seth Ackerman, Aaron Donaghy via Jacobin on December 29, 2024
Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter Was the True Change Agent of the Cold War

There’s a reason the 39th president is still revered by former Soviet dissidents.
by Michael Hirsh via Foreign Policy on December 29, 2024
Spock and Kirk in a scene from Star Trek.

Star Trek’s Cold War

While America was fighting on the ground, the Federation was fighting in space.
by Tom Nichols via The Atlantic on December 26, 2024
The flags of the USA and the USSR.

Cold War Tones

Two books that remind us that tone and timbre, musical style and sound, matter to history.
by Michael J. Kramer via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on July 28, 2024
Closed fist with faces of Judith Shklar, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Lionel Trilling

Cold War Liberalism Is Still With Us. Is That a Good Thing?

A scholarly roundtable on Samuel Moyn's new book.
by Jan-Werner Müller, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Nicolas Guilhot, Penny Marie von Eschen, Vaughn Rasberry via The Chronicle of Higher Education on October 2, 2023
A pole vaulter pointing the end of the pole at the camera.

Pole Vaulting Over the Iron Curtain

When it became clear that the United States and its allies couldn’t “liberate” Eastern Europe through psychological war and covert ops, they turned to sports.
by Matthew Wills, Toby Rider, Kevin Witherspoon via JSTOR Daily on May 12, 2023
JFK and Jacqueline in the convertible limousine in Dallas.

A Weekend in Dallas

Revisiting political assassinations.
by Noah Kulwin via noahkulwin.substack on November 22, 2022
Checkpoint Charlie, seen from West Berlin in 1960.

The Disastrous Return of Cold War Strategy

Hal Brands urges the U.S. to make China and Russia “pay exorbitantly” for their policies. History shows that has never worked.
by Jordan Michael Smith via The New Republic on March 10, 2022
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping walking down a red carpet past a row of Chinese military guards.

Can Cold War History Prevent U.S.-Chinese Calamity?

Learning the right lessons of the past.
by Odd Arne Westad, Li Chen via Foreign Affairs on November 29, 2021
Ronald Reagan and popular musicians from 1980s, black and white collage with colorful shapes

I Want My Mutually Assured Destruction

How 1980s MTV helped my students understand the Cold War.
by Tom Nichols via The Atlantic on May 8, 2021
illustration of boy playing Cold War video game

First-Person Shooter Ideology

The cultural contradictions of Call of Duty.
by Daniel Bessner via The Drift on February 2, 2021
Sidney Hook speaking at the opening session of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin on June 26, 1950.

Is Science Political?

Many take the separation between science and politics for granted, but this view of science has its own political origins.
by Michael D. Gordin via Boston Review on August 20, 2019

Banking on the Cold War

The Cold War says more about how U.S. elites imagined their “freedom” than it does about enabling other people to be free.
by Nikhil Pal Singh via Boston Review on March 14, 2019

The Lethal Crescent

The 45 years of peace between the Cold War superpowers were 45 years of killing for much of the rest of the world.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The Nation on December 20, 2018

Goodbye, Cold War

For the first time, we are living in a truly post-cold-war political environment in the United States.
by Aziz Rana via n+1 on November 30, 2018
Zbigniew Brzezinski

Less Than Grand Strategy

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Cold War.
by Andrew J. Bacevich via The Nation on November 21, 2018

The World the Cold War Built

A new book says the conflict began in the late 19th century and subsumed even World War II as our defining event.
by Leon Hadar via The American Conservative on January 31, 2018

Operation Mongoose: The Story of America's Efforts to Overthrow Castro

And how they helped seal America’s fate in Vietnam.
by Max Boot via The Atlantic on January 5, 2018

Our Cold War World

How the contest between capitalism and communism shaped world politics—and defines today’s inequalities.
by Patrick Iber via The New Republic on October 30, 2017

The U.S. Contemplated a Nuclear Confrontation in North Korea in 1953.

The Trump Administration can - and should - learn from that moment.
by David E. Kaiser via TIME on April 14, 2017

The World Almost Ended One Week in 1983

In 1983, the U.S. simulated a nuclear war with Russia—and narrowly avoided starting a real one. We might not be so lucky next time.
by Nate Jones, J. Peter Scoblic via Slate on April 13, 2017
Cover of the U.S. Physical Fitness Program book, featuring silhouettes of people doing calisthenics.
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Run DNC, Run RNC

When the federal government began to claim a stake in the public’s physical fitness, and the origins of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.
via BackStory on July 10, 2015
Southdale mall

How the Cold War Shaped the Design of American Malls

America's first mall was designed as an insular utopia, providing shelter and a controlled environment during uncertain times.
by Marni Epstein-Mervis via Curbed on June 11, 2014
"Sunrise at Northport Harbor" painting by Arthur Dove.

Unpopular Front

American art and the Cold War.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on October 9, 2005
AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland stands behind a podium speaking into an array of microphones.

When US Labor Backed US Imperialism

After the successful purges of leftists from unions, US labor leaders were enlisted by government officials to join in their global imperialist operations.
by Micah Uetricht, Jeff Schuhrke via Jacobin on May 26, 2025
Zbigniew Brzezinski

The Coldest Cold Warrior

How a sharp-elbowed Polish academic with an unpronounceable name helped defeat the Soviet Union.
by Eric Edelman via The Bulwark on May 23, 2025
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The History of Government Influence Over Universities

During the Cold War, the government relied on universities for research, but also saw scholars as dangerous.
by Jeffrey Rosario via Made By History on May 20, 2025
A group of men in a bar watching Oliver North testify before Congress.
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How the Iran-Contra Scandal Impacts American Politics Today

The Iran-Contra affair exposed how government officials can ignore democratic norms and practices.
by Alan McPherson via Made By History on May 14, 2025
Picture of Yalta revealed behind torn paper

The Post-World War II System Was Always Fragile

Franklin Roosevelt warned that even in peacetime, America’s obligations to the world would continue.
by Julian E. Zelizer via Foreign Policy on May 12, 2025
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