The middle years of the cultural Cold War have not been well served by the historiography, which has focused on the earlier period. Important exceptions include David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) and Rana Mitter and Patrick Major (eds.), Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History (London: Frank Cass, 2004). Cultural dimensions are now regularly considered in the core journals of Cold War history, Cold War History, The Journal of Cold War Studies, and media history journals like Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.
The mechanics of Soviet international propaganda in the Cold War are well discussed in Nigel Gould-Davies, "The Logic of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy", Diplomatic History, 27 (2003), 193-214, but for sustained treatments the researcher should begin with Frederick C. Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960) and his follow-up Soviet Foreign Propaganda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1964), and Baruch A. Hazan, Soviet Propaganda: A Case Study of the Middle East Conflict (Jerusalem: Keter, 1976), and Soviet International Propaganda (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982).
On US propaganda, Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) provides a complete overview using recently declassified material. Much the best volume on the cultural dimension is Richard T. Arndt, The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2005). American and Western broadcasting during the Cold War are both treated in Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting and the Cold War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997). An invaluable insight into the working of US cultural diplomacy may be gained from the memoir of LyndonJohnson's assistant secretary of state for cultural relations, Charles Frankel, High on Foggy Bottom: An Outsider’s Insider View of Government (New York: Harper & Row, 1969). The story of US and Soviet exchanges has been told in Yale Richmond's two studies: U. S.-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986: Who Wins? (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), and Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). Leader exchanges are analyzed in Giles Scott-Smith's masterly Networks of Empire: The U. S. State Department’s Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands, France, and Britain 1950-70 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008).
European initiatives in the field of cultural diplomacy may be explored in Francis Donaldson, The British Council: The First Fifty Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), and Franpois Roche and Bernard Pigniau, Histoires de diplomatie culturelle des origins d 1995 (Paris: La Documentation Franpaise, 1995). On German cultural diplomacy and language policy from the Weimar Republic to the early Federal Republic, see Eckard Michels, Von der Deutschen Akademie zum Goethe-Institut: Sprach - und auswdrtige Kulturpolitik 1923-1960 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005).
While there is a wide literature on the content of Cold War culture, a magnificent starting point from the Anglo-American perspective that integrates culture and politics across the entire Cold War period is Fred Inglis, The Cruel Peace: Everyday Life in the Cold War (New York: Basic Books, 1991). The story of the transformation of American culture during the middle Cold War/Vietnam period is explored in Tom Engelhardt, The End ofthe Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
An excellent introduction to American Cold War culture may be found in Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996) . America's specific nuclear fears have been addressed by Paul S. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), and Margot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1997) , and, in a comprehensive work that includes global cultural responses, Paul Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction 1895-1984 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986), updated at Www. wsu. edu/~brians/nuclear/.
For an introduction to Cold War cinema across the entire period in the United States and the United Kingdom, see Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), and his Hollywood’s Cold War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007). On Cold War classical epics, see Martin M. Winkler (ed.) Spartacus: Film and History (London: Blackwells, 2007), and Sandra R. Joshel, Margaret Malamud, and Donald T. McGuire, Jr. (eds.), Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
Those seeking a scholarly treatment of film and TV spies should begin with James Chapman, Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), and his Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002). On spy literature more broadly, see John G. Cawelti and Bruce A. Rosenberg, The Spy Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). A good starting point for understanding the evolution of American war films is the revised edition of Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). The best starting point on the Western genre in the Cold War remains Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
Points of entry in English into the culture of the USSR and Eastern Europe include Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). On Soviet attitudes towards the United States, see Eric Shiraev and Vladislav Zubok, Anti-Americanism in Russia from Stalin to Putin (New York: Palgrave, 2000). For Eastern European film, begin with Dina Iordanova, Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film (London: Wallflower Press, 2003).
World History
