Description
Book SynopsisExploring the relationship between the growth of global media and Cold War tensions and resolutions
Trade Review“The historical background Schwoch provides is certainly relevant as a backdrop to the US’s involvement with electronic information networks in the 21st century . . . . This is a readable, well-researched study.”--
Choice"Vital to our understanding of global media."--Cinema Journal
"An ambitious and informative study."--
American Historical Review“A wholly original, well-researched, and superbly written account of the development of global television set within the intertwined contexts of American foreign policy, psychological warfare, and information diplomacy during the years 1946–69. Stimulating and enjoyable.”--John T. Caldwell, author of
Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television“The sheer joy that Schwoch takes in hauling curiosities out of the archives is contagious. The result is a portrait that brings forth many treasures, some comic, some poignant, from the Cold War era, and also provides some serious food for thought in considering current U.S. policy about international media and goodwill building.”--John Durham Peters, author of
Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal TraditionTable of ContentsAcknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
PART 1: THE FIRST STRAND 1. "A Facet of East-West Problems" 17
2. "A Western Mind Would Consider This Kind of Spectacle as Stupid" 31
3. "The Key to Many of These Countries Is Not the Mud Hut Population" 43
4. "A Group of Angry Young Intellectuals" 61
PART 2: THE SECOND STRAND 5. "We Can Give the World a Vision of America" 79
6. "A Record of Some Kind in the History of International Communication" 94
7. "Something of That Sense of World Citizenship" 118
8. "A New Idea Capable of Uniting the Thoughts of People All Over the Earth" 139
Epilogue: "To Speak with a Single Voice Abroad" 157
Notes 175
Selected Bibliography 207
Index 213
Illustrations follow pages 76 and 138
