Spirits of the Cold War

Contesting Worldviews in the Classical Age of American Security Strategy

Ned O'Gorman

Narrated by Dan Kassis

Available from Audible

Book published by Michigan State University Press

In spring of 1953, newly elected President Eisenhower sat down with his staff to discuss the state of American strategy in the cold war. America, he insisted, needed a new approach to an urgent situation. From this meeting emerged Eisenhower’s teams of “bright young fellows,” charged with developing competing policies, each of which would come to shape global politics. In Spirits of the Cold War, Ned O’Gorman argues that the early Cold War was a crucible not only for contesting political strategies, but also for competing conceptions of America and its place in the world. Drawing on extensive archival research and wide reading in intellectual and rhetorical histories, this comprehensive account shows cold warriors debating “worldviews” in addition to more strictly instrumental tactical aims. Spirits of the Cold War is a rigorous scholarly account of the strategic debate of the early Cold War — a cultural diagnostic of American security discourse and an examination of its origins.

Ned O'Gorman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has served as the President of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric.