Archive for February 2012

The 1980s. More than the Reagan Revolution

Posted on February 29, 2012, 13:18, by Nick Blackbourn, under academia, cold war, cold war culture.

Bradford Martin’s ‘The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan (Hill & Wang: New York, 2011)’ challenges the dominance of the ‘rise of conservatism’ theme in our understanding of the 1980s. ‘More than 40 percent of American voters demurred from sanctioning this movement, not to mention the roughly 50 percent [...]

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On Brezhnev Nuking Kissinger’s House and Giving Him Cookies

Posted on February 8, 2012, 11:19, by Nick Blackbourn, under cold war, cold war culture.

Last week at the Ford Presidential Library I came across some fun memos and documents. Transcriptions of official government meetings often begin with ‘[Preceded by small talk.]‘ But when this ‘small talk’ is included it can be quite interesting, and is sometimes pretty funny. If nothing else, it reminds us that beyond the nuclear stand-off [...]

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