"A Cold War State of Mind provides a fascinating framework for understanding both the strength and breakdown of the Cold War consensus in postwar America. Using the trope of brainwashing, it integrates contemporary debates about politics, psychology, and the crisis of masculinity to present an intriguing analysis of anxieties that the suspected communist infiltration of American society could succeed through the infection and contamination of Americans' brains. It is a wide ranging, concise, and thoroughly enjoyable book."—Robert A. Jacobs, author of The Dragon's Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age
"A Cold War State of Mind provides a fascinating framework for understanding both the strength and breakdown of the Cold War consensus in postwar America. Using the trope of brainwashing, it integrates contemporary debates about politics, psychology, and the crisis of masculinity to present an intriguing analysis of anxieties that the suspected communist infiltration of American society could succeed through the infection and contamination of Americans brains. It is a wide ranging, concise, and thoroughly enjoyable book."—Robert A. Jacobs, author of The Dragon s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age
"This well-written monograph explores an under appreciated aspect of the early Cold War years: the pervasiveness of cultural anxieties prompted by the fear of brainwashing. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice
"Dunne outlines America's fear, frustration, and fascination with mind control, suggesting its enduring presence in several genres, including film and television. . . . Indoctrination, psychological manipulation, and social engineering were used, the author argues, to convey a simple message to workers; accept."—H-Net Reviews
"Lucid and readable."—Bulletin of History of Medicine
"Matthew W. Dunne's book about the fears of brainwashing in early Cold War America offers many parallels with the discourse surrounding today's global war on terror. . . . Nonhistorians might find Dunne's last chapter, "The Legacy of Brain Warfare," especially useful. This brings readers up to the present day via clever analysis of recent television espionage series, most notably Barack Obama's favorite, Homeland. In the process, Dunne shows how influential an intellectual shortcut brainwashing still is."—Journal of American History
"The author has certainly demonstrated the discursive and metaphoric persuasiveness of brainwashing in the early Cold War, and his argument for its continued relevance in the contemporary era of the War on Terror likewise has merit."—American Historical Review
"Dunne has taken a seemingly narrow topic and successfully used it to explore the psyche of Cold War America."—Newsletter of the New England Historical Association
"Those of us who study new religious movements, and are attuned to the history of that study as it impacts the present and future progress of new religions studies, will find Dunne's work invaluable. He contextualizes for us, as few have done before, the brainwashing debates that arose in the 1970s regarding young adults joining cults."—Nova Religio
"A Cold War State of Mind provokes readers to consider a constellation of tensions born of a singular historical moment: When cold war internationalism met a hyper-consumption oriented economy. Out of this encounter came the unsettling sense that Americans were in danger of losing their individuality and freedom at the very same moment they were tasked with leading the free world."—Pacific Historical Review
"A Cold War State of Mind is an important contribution to our understanding of post-World War II American society and our increasing perception that the individual is threatened by forces of conformity and standardization."—Journal of American Culture
"Dunne's book provides an elegant tour of mainstream American culture in the 1950s and early '60s, and could be a useful addition to course syllabi. . . . A Cold War State of Mind is persuasive in its argument that the Manichean assumptions inherent in 'brainwashing' have played, and continue to play, an outsized role in the American popular imagination."—History Workshop Journal