Cold War Afterlives. Made in America

Is the Cold War a distant, indistinct memory, of significance only to specialist historians? Not at all. Interest in the Cold War and its many legacies is alive and flourishing throughout the United States. Preservation of the Cold War’s physical legacy in the United States is caught up in an arena of contention where public memory, emotions, agendas, and scholarly arguments collide with concerns over representation, community economic development, life-and-death environmental issues, as well as a host of governmental regulations from design codes to property rights to preservation requirements. As Allen’s survey of American developments shows, much like the Cold War, battles over Cold War memory are waged simultaneously on different continents, all too often with the chief protagonists unaware of experiences in other places.