There have been so many books on the subject of American culture during the Cold War that one might wonder what is there new to be said. In this respect, American Cold War Culture only half succeeds. Its editor, Douglas Field, an independent scholar who has taught at the University of York and Staffordshire University, has lined up an impressive array of talent. The contributors include Robert J. Corber, Jacqueline Foretsch, Catherine Gunther Kodat, Scott Lucas, Alan Nadel, David Ryan, Dina Smith and Hugh Stevens, writing about topics like gender and sexuality, race, politics, the family, mobility, film, literature, culture and television. Certainly, some of these chapters have a ring of the familiar about them, already having appeared in other forms elsewhere, somewhat belying the cover’s claim to introduce ‘a number of previously neglected themes, films and texts’. At the same time, however, there were some genuinely new and insightful contributions to this already well-developed field. In this respect, the stand-out chapter here was Smith’s ‘Movable Containers: Cold War Trailers and Trailer Parks’, to which can be added the offerings from Forestch (on women’s magazines and the polio crisis), Field (on James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room), Kodat (Disney’s Song of the South and the Birth of the White Negro) and Stevens (on Robert Lowell).

In terms of navigation, following an introduction, these nine chapters are divided into two sections – cultural themes and cultural forms. Each essay is prefaced by a contextualizing introduction (in a different font to demarcate it from the main essay), end-noted and backed up with a bibliography, suggestions for further reading and an index. In addition to my criticism above, another is that each essay – intended as a case study of the themes aforementioned – seems shoehorned into its accompanying theme but doesn’t always seem to fit snugly. Furthermore, while the book is not intended to be comprehensive or exhaustive it doesn’t go anywhere near those themes and topics which really have been neglected. Why, for example, is there not more on religion? Overall, then, American Cold War Culture will make a fine introduction to students of this area, not least as the means for them to really look for the unexamined.