American Pop: Culture, Crisis, and the Cold War Imagination

From the bestselling American Pop series comes a vivid cultural history of the Cold War-how a global standoff reshaped American life from the inside out.

American Pop: Culture, Crisis, and the Cold War Imagination uncovers how the Cold War transformed American culture not just through politics and diplomacy, but through shopping malls, comic books, science fiction, kitchen appliances, and civil defense drills. From the first atomic tests to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Taylor Prescott explores how everyday life became a stage for ideological conflict, with entertainment, advertising, and even childhood games infused with geopolitical stakes.

This is not a retrospective account of Cold War memory, but a close look at the cultural pressures and contradictions Americans experienced in real time-when the Cold War was not history, but the present tense. Through spy thrillers, Barbie dolls, duck-and-cover campaigns, and the rise of television, Prescott shows how the culture of containment filtered into homes, classrooms, and imaginations, shaping national identity and private life alike.

Sharp, accessible, and deeply researched, this installment of the American Pop series reveals how ordinary Americans absorbed, resisted, and reimagined Cold War ideologies through the stories they told and the media they consumed. Whether you're drawn to postwar history, media studies, or the strange logic of American fear and desire, this book offers a compelling portrait of a superpower in psychological overdrive-and of the cultural machinery that helped it make sense of the world.