Hours after the USSR collapsed in 1991, Congress began making plans to establish
the official memory of the Cold War. Conservatives dominated the proceedings,
spending millions to portray the conflict as a triumph of good over evil and a
defeat of totalitarianism equal in significance to World War II. In this
provocative book, historian Jon Wiener visits Cold War monuments, museums, and
memorials across the United States to find out how the era is being remembered.
The author's journey provides a history of the Cold War, one that turns many
conventional notions on their heads.
In an engaging travelogue that takes readers to sites such as the