By David Oshinsky
THE FREE WORLD
By Louis Menand
Historians who write about the early Cold War era have a particularly sharp eye for the underside of American politics. Their narratives, for the most part, stress racism, McCarthyism, the diminishment of women, restrictive immigration laws â all vital truths, but not the only truths, from our admittedly messy past. It is much the same regarding studies of Cold War culture
, with book upon book skewering lowbrow entertainment, excessive consumerism and stifling conformity. There too often is a blind spot in which the positives of this era â soaring college enrollments, record book sales, judicial blows against racial injustice, a declining wealth gap â are viewed as tangential to the narrative, or worse, as cover for the nationâs many ills.
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