The Cold War is back in the news. So is history, in the sense of past geopolitical confrontations that for a span of a few decades were thought to be largely decoupled from present-day political developments. Of course, such reflexive reactions lack nuance and, until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, tended to refer more to tensions between the United States and China. We should neither see Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine immediately as part of a new cold war—though it could certainly become one of its foundation pieces—nor define history simply in terms of warfare and conflict. Yet such history has great appeal in efforts to understand the dizzying and depressing events of recent years. For example, correspondents and commentators have likened the delivery of weapons systems, protective gear, and humanitarian aid to a beleaguered Ukraine to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49. But relying on history as a guide may mislead as much as enlighten. No city symbolizes the Cold War quite as Berlin does. When we think of the Cold War and of Berlin, we tend to emphasize the crises—the 1948–49 blockade and airlift, perhaps the 1953 East German workers’ uprising, surely the 1958­–61 crisis, during which the Berlin Wall was built—and the climactic ending of the Cold War in Europe when the wall came down. Berlin may conjure up iconic moments and tropes, from a statement attributed to Nikita Khrushchev in 1963 that Berlin was “the testicles of the West,” to John F. Kennedy’s insistence that all free men had to be invested in the defense of Berlin, to Ronald Reagan’s exhortation to Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” For American presidents (or presidential hopefuls), Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate have remained powerful images, even in the twenty-first century. A presence in Berlin signals strong leadership in the West, even though the proximate reasons why the West, as a political construct, emerged in the first place may be gone. In that sense, Berlin also stands for overcoming the past: first, West Berlin as the counterpoint not only to eastern communism but also to defeated fascism, and second, the new Berlin as the capital of a unified Germany and as a symbol that the West has won.

This is the first book that examines how “ethnic spectacle” in the form of Asian and Latin American bodies played a significant role in the cultural Cold War at three historic junctures: the Korean War in 1950, the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the statehood of Hawaii in 1959. As a means to strengthen U.S. internationalism and in an effort to combat the growing influence of communism, television variety shows, such as The Xavier Cugat Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Chevy Show, were envisioned as early forms of global television. Beyond the Black and White TV examines the intimate moments of cultural interactions between the white hosts and the ethnic guests to illustrate U.S. aspirations for global power through the medium of television. These depictions of racial harmony aimed to shape a new perception of the United States as an exemplary nation of democracy, equality, and globalism.

In postwar Europe and the Middle East, Hilton hotels were quite literally "little Americas." For American businessmen and tourists, a Hilton Hotel—with the comfortable familiarity of an English-speaking staff, a restaurant that served cheeseburgers and milkshakes, trans-Atlantic telephone lines, and, most important, air-conditioned modernity—offered a respite from the disturbingly alien. For impoverished local populations, these same features lent the Hilton a utopian aura. The Hilton was a space of luxury and desire, a space that realized, permanently and prominently, the new and powerful presence of the United States.

Building the Cold War examines the architectural means by which the Hilton was written into the urban topographies of the major cities of Europe and the Middle East as an effective representation of the United States. Between 1953 and 1966, Hilton International built sixteen luxury hotels abroad. Often the Hilton was the first significant modern structure in the host city, as well as its finest hotel. The Hiltons introduced a striking visual contrast to the traditional architectural forms of such cities as Istanbul, Cairo, Athens, and Jerusalem, where the impact of its new architecture was amplified by the hotel's unprecedented siting and scale. Even in cities familiar with the Modern, the new Hilton often dominated the urban landscape with its height, changing the look of the city. The London Hilton on Park Lane, for example, was the first structure in London that was higher than St. Paul's cathedral.

In his autobiography, Conrad N. Hilton claimed that these hotels were constructed for profit and for political impact: "an integral part of my dream was to show the countries most exposed to Communism the other side of the coin—the fruits of the free world." Exploring everything the carefully drafted contracts for the buildings to the remarkable visual and social impact on their host cities, Wharton offers a theoretically sophisticated critique of one of the Cold War's first international businesses and demonstrates that the Hilton's role in the struggle against Communism was, as Conrad Hilton declared, significant, though in ways that he could not have imagined.

Many of these postwar Hiltons still flourish. Those who stay in them will learn a great deal about their experience from this new assessment of hotel space.