Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design by Greg Castillo
Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design by Greg Castillo PDF, ePub eBook D0wnl0ad
Amid a display of sunshine-yellow electric appliances in a model home at the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon squared off on the merits of their respective economic systems. One of the signature events of the cold war, the impromptu Kitchen Debate has been widely viewed as the opening skirmish in a propaganda war over which superpower could provide a better standard of living for its citizens. However, as Greg Castillo shows in Cold War on the Home Front, this debate and the American National Exhibition itself were, in fact, the culmination of a decade-long ideological battle fought with refrigerators, televisions, living room suites, and prefab homes.
The first in-depth history of how domestic environments were exploited to promote the superiority of either capitalism or socialism on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Cold War on the Home Front reveals the tactics used by the American government to seduce citizens of the Soviet bloc with state-of-the-art consumer goods and the reactions of the Communist Party. Beginning in 1950, the U.S. State Department sponsored home expositions in West Berlin that were specifically designed to attract residents of East Berlin, featuring dream homes with modernist furnishings that presented an idealized vision of the lifestyle enjoyed by the consumer-citizen in the West. In response, Party authorities in East Germany staged socialist home expositions intended to evoke the domestic ideal of a cultured proletariat.
Castillo closely follows the course of this escalating rivalry between competing consumer cultures through the 1950s, concluding that the Soviet bloc's inability to make good on the claim that it could emulate goods and living standards offered by the West was a contributing factor in communism's eventual demise. Using a mosaic of sources ranging from recently declassified government documents to homemaking journals and popular fiction, Cold War on the Home Front contributes an engaging new perspective on midcentury modernist style and its political uses at the dawn of the cold war.
From reader reviews:
Geraldine Bagley:
Book is to be different for each and every grade. Book for children until eventually adult are different content. As we know that book is very important for us. The book Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design was making you to know about other understanding and of course you can take more information. It doesn't matter what advantages for you. The reserve Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design is not only giving you much more new information but also to be your friend when you feel bored. You can spend your current spend time to read your guide. Try to make relationship together with the book Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design. You never really feel lose out for everything should you read some books.
Debra Ruff:
As people who live in the actual modest era should be up-date about what going on or facts even knowledge to make these individuals keep up with the era which can be always change and make progress. Some of you maybe will probably update themselves by reading books. It is a good choice in your case but the problems coming to you actually is you don't know what kind you should start with. This Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design is our recommendation to make you keep up with the world. Why, as this book serves what you want and need in this era.
Willie Alford:
Is it an individual who having spare time subsequently spend it whole day by means of watching television programs or just resting on the bed? Do you need something new? This Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design can be the solution, oh how comes? It's a book you know. You are therefore out of date, spending your time by reading in this fresh era is common not a nerd activity. So what these books have than the others?
Read Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design by Greg Castillo for online ebook
Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design by Greg Castillo Free PDF d0wnl0ad, audio books, books to read, good books to read, cheap books, good books, online books, books online, book reviews epub, read books online, books to read online, online library, greatbooks to read, PDF best books to read, top books to read Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design by Greg Castillo books to read online.
No comments:
Post a Comment