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John F. Kennedy meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, 1961.

The Way We Understand the Cold War Is Wrong

People tend to assume they know exactly what the Cold War was and when it ended. Anders Stephanson argues that this standard chronology doesn’t fit the facts.
by Anders Stephanson via Jacobin on July 27, 2025
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.
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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

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
Soldiers watching a nuclear explosion.

Why Don’t We Take Nuclear Weapons Seriously?

The risk of nuclear war has only grown, yet the public and government officials are increasingly cavalier. Some experts are trying to change that.
by Rivka Galchen via The New Yorker on September 2, 2025
Frank Meyer testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1959.

Frank Meyer’s Path from Devoted Communist to Promoter of Conservative ‘Fusionism’

A detailed, exhausting, and ultimately too-gentle treatment of the midcentury writer and editor, Frank Meyer.
by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on August 26, 2025
Part of the Parthenon Frieze, Elgin Marbles, British Museum.

The Origins of the West

Georgios Varouxakis reexamines when and why people began to conceptualize "the West."
by Max Skjönsberg via Law & Liberty on August 25, 2025
A young Donald Trump tosses an apple into the air.

When Trump's Brain Broke

Donald Trump seems stuck in the 80s.
by John Ganz via Unpopular Front on August 21, 2025
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