Results by title

163 books match the query '1945-1989' and 4 start with u

cover of Un-American: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution

Un-American

W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution

Bill V Mullen

Temple University Press, 2015

Un-American is Bill Mullen’s revisionist account of renowned author and activist W.E.B. Du Bois’s political thought toward the end of his life, a period largely dismissed and neglected by scholars. He describes Du Bois’s support for what the Communist International called “world revolution” as the primary objective of this aged radical’s activism. Du Bois was a champion of the world’s laboring millions and critic of the Cold War, a man dedicated to animating global political revolution.

Mullen argues that Du Bois believed that the Cold War stalemate could create the conditions in which the world powers could achieve not only peace but workers’ democracy. Un-American shows Du Bois to be deeply engaged in international networks and personal relationships with revolutionaries in India, China, and Africa. Mullen explores how thinkers like Karl Marx, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Gandhi, and C.L.R. James helped him develop a theory of world revolution at a stage in his life when most commentators regard him as marginalized. This original political biography also challenges assessments of Du Bois as an American “race man.”

[more]
cover of Uncertain Perceptions: U.S. Cold War Crisis Decision Making

Uncertain Perceptions

U.S. Cold War Crisis Decision Making

Robert B. McCalla

University of Michigan Press, 1992

In Uncertain Perceptions, Robert McCalla examines the role of misperceptions in decision making by U.S. officials during five major Cold War crises.To suggest that misperceptions have played an important role in U.S.-Soviet relations will surprise no one. Most people, including scholars and decision makers, will agree that the potential for misperception and miscommunication is high, and the dangers of the nuclear age simply compound the risk. What has been missing is a consideration of the role of different types of misperception in crisis decision making and the impacts of those different types of misperceptions on the dynamics of crises. Different types of misperceptions can occur during a crisis; and the type will influence the nature and duration of the crisis.McCalla shows that the crisis dynamic is sensitive to the sources of misperception and that the most important influence on misperceptions is the flexibility of a decision maker’s worldview. In contrast with previous studies, McCalla’s work provides evidence that decision makers are not necessarily firmly wedded to their views. He refines the concept of misperception by identifying two types: “situational misperception,” which stems from the ambiguities and uncertainties that can surround another state’s actions, and “dispositional misconception," which has to do with the attitudes and images that a particular decision maker holds. Crises rooted in situational misperceptions will tend toward resolution when more information is provided to the decision maker, while crises that originate from dispositional misperceptions will be less affected by additional information. With the end of the Cold War, historians and political scientists are reexamining the history of U.S.-Soviet relations away from the glare of Cold War politics and rhetoric, and in doing so advancing new ways of understanding past conflicts.Uncertain Perceptions offers students of American policy, both generalists and specialists, a new lens for understanding American decision making during U.S.-Soviet crises and the role that perceptions and misperceptions played in those decisions.
[more]
cover of Understanding and Teaching the Cold War

Understanding and Teaching the Cold War

Edited by Matthew Masur

University of Wisconsin Press, 2016

For nearly a half century, from 1945 to 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union maneuvered to achieve global hegemony. Each forged political alliances, doled out foreign aid, mounted cultural campaigns, and launched covert operations. The Cold War also deeply affected the domestic politics, cultures, and economic policies of the two superpowers, their client states, and other nations throughout the world.
            Teaching the Cold War is both necessary and challenging. Understanding and Teaching the Cold War is designed to help collegiate and high school teachers navigate the complexity of the topic, integrate up-to-date research and concepts into their classes, and use strategies and tools that make this important history meaningful to students.
            The volume opens with Matthew Masur’s overview of models for approaching the subject, whether in survey courses or seminars. Two prominent historians, Carole Fink and Warren Cohen, offer accounts of their experience as longtime scholars and teachers of the Cold War from European and Asian perspectives. Sixteen essays dig into themes including the origins and end of the conflict, nuclear weapons, diplomacy, propaganda, fear, popular culture, and civil rights, as well as the Cold War in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, East Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the nonaligned nations. A final section provides practical advice for using relevant, accessible primary sources to implement the teaching ideas suggested in this book.
[more]
cover of Unfinished Socialism: Pictures from the Kádár Era

Unfinished Socialism

Pictures from the Kádár Era

András Gero

Central European University Press, 1999

This extraordinary book provides a snapshot of socialism throughout the Kádár regime in Hungary (1956-1989) and captures the essence of the world behind the ‘iron curtain’ in a stunning, and often stark, collection of photographs.

Unfinished Socialism is a visually stunning anthropological study containing 450 photographs, many previously unpublished, which portray life in Hungary from every angle: from the May Day March to pop music and from the homeless to sport.

With an introduction that will help the reader understand and appreciate the true meaning of the photographs, this political, social and cultural study of the Kádár years transports the reader back to a time of great significance in Hungary’s long and turbulent history.

[more]