Description
Book SynopsisHow new ideas of space contributed to a broad mobilization of American power.
Trade Review"The Contours of America's Cold War offers a vital new contribution to American studies. Matthew Farish shows how the geopolitics of the Cold War required a new cartography, producing a wide ranging transformation in how Americans understood urban, national, and planetary space. It breaks new ground in showing how the human sciences were militarized under the logics of global threat during the early Cold War. Essential reading for anyone investigating the deep roots of American militarism or the spatial contours of our modern world." —Joseph Masco, University of Chicago
"The Contours of America’s Cold War is an outstanding book directed at understanding the varied geographical underpinnings of the conduct of the Cold War in the U.S. context from 1945 to 1960. Farish addresses the global, national, laboratory/think tank, and urban dimensions of how the Cold War created a new American socio-political consciousness that has not yet been left behind." —John Agnew, UCLA
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction: A History of Cold War Spaces
1. Global Views: Geopolitics, Science, and Culture
2. Regional Intelligence: The Militarization of Geographical Knowledge
3. Illuminating the Terrain: Social Science Finds Its Targets
4. The Cybernetic Continent: North America as Defense Laboratory
5. Anxious Urbanism: Strategies for the Atomic City
Conclusion: Into Space
Acknowledgments
Notes
Publication History
Index
