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400 pp., 6.125 x 9.25

January, 2012

ISBN (paper): 

978-1-55849-913-3

Price (paper) $: 

29.95

Add to Cart

January, 2012

ISBN (cloth): 

978-1-55849-912-6

Price (cloth) $: 

80.00

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A volume in the series:

Culture, Politics, and the Cold War

Liberty and Justice for All?

Rethinking Politics in Cold War America

A wide-ranging exploration of the culture of American politics in the early decades of the Cold War

edited by Kathleen G. Donohue

From the congressional debate over the “fall of China” to the drama of the Army–McCarthy hearings to the kitchen faceoff between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev, the political history of the early Cold War was long dominated by studies of presidential administrations, anticommunism, and foreign policy. In Liberty and Justice for All? a group of distinguished historians representing a variety of disciplinary perspectives—social history, cultural history, intellectual history, labor history, urban history, women’s history, African American studies, and media studies—expand on the political history of the early Cold War by rethinking the relationship between politics and culture. How, for example, did folk music help to keep movement culture alive throughout the 1950s? How did the new medium of television change fundamental assumptions about politics and the electorate? How did American experiences with religion in the 1950s strengthen the separation of church and state? How did race, class, and gender influence the relationship between citizens and the state? These are just some of the questions addressed in this wide-ranging set of essays.

In addition to volume editor Kathleen G. Donohue, contributors include Howard Brick, Kari Frederickson, Andrea Friedman, David Greenberg, Grace Elizabeth Hale, Jennifer Klein, Laura McEnaney, Kevin M. Schultz, Jason Scott Smith, Landon R. Y. Storrs, and Jessica Weiss.

"An excellent, well-written, and very fresh look at the long 1950s from a variety of different and interesting perspectives. Taken as a whole, the essays raise a host of questions about our standard narrative of the postwar era, the Cold War era and its dour man in the gray flannel suit domesticity story. And many of them provide some intriguing answers to questions that have scarcely even been raised by other historians."—James B. Gilbert, coeditor of Rethinking Cold War Culture

Kathleen G. Donohue is associate professor of history at Central Michigan University and author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the Consumer.

Introduction. Kathleen G. Donohue . . . 1


PART I: RETHINKING McCARTHYISM AND COLD WAR ANTICOMMUNISM

Access Denied: Anticommunism and the Public’s Right to Know. Kathleen G. Donohue . . . 21

Red Scare Politics and the Suppression of Left-Feminism: The Loyalty Investigation of Mary Dublin Keyserlin. Landon R. Y. Storrs . . . 51

The Strange Career of Annie Lee Moss: Rethinking Race, Gender, and McCarthyism. Andrea Friedman . . . 91

“Fraud of Femininity”: Domesticity, Selflessness, and Individualism in Responses to Betty Friedan. Jessica Weiss . . . 124


PART II: RETHINKING THE POLITICS OF COLD WAR CULTURE

The Disenchantment of America: Radical Echoes in 1950s Political Criticism. Howard Brick . . . 157

A New Way of Campaigning: Eisenhower, Stevenson, and the Anxieties of Television Politics. David Greenberg . . . 185

The Irony of the Postwar Religious Revival: Catholics, Jews, and the Creation of the Naked Public Square. Kevin M. Schultz . . . 213

The Union of Folk Music and Left Politics: Pete Seeger in Cold War America. Grace Elizabeth Hale . . . 243


PART III: RETHINKING THE COLD WAR STATE AND ECONOMY

The Transformation of the Cold War State: From Welfare to Security. Jason Scott Smith . . . 281

Nightmares on Elm Street: Demobilization in Chicago and the Politics of “Peace,” 1945-1953. Laura McEnaney . . . 302

The Politics of Economic Security after World War II. Jennifer Klein . . . 334

Corporate Culture, the Cold War, and the American South in the 1950s and 1960s. Kari Frederickson . . . 361


Contributors . . . 383
Index . . . 387