FREE WORLD: Art and Thought In The Cold War

The TLS said, 'Elegantly written, entertaining and bursting with information... [Menand] has undertaken what few writers of intellectual history would dare to do.' Full of surprises, here is a book that will change the way you think about everything from containment to consumerism, the Beats to the Beatles. The Cold War was not just a conquest of power but also was about ideas in the broadest sense - economic and political, artistic and personal. Scholar and critic Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War Two to Vietnam and stresses the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic. How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian scepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by experimentation? How was the ideal of 'freedom' applied to causes that range from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt's Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and the post-war Vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism. He also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and thought so that America's once neglected culture became respected and adored. It is a masterly account of the main characters and minor figures who played their part and touches on Hollywood. It recalls a time when America's government, its philanthropic foundations, universities and cultural institutions established exchange programmes for writers and scholars, distributed literature around the globe, and sent art from American collections and music by American composers and performers abroad. Books were available in affordable translations and foreign movies imported and distributed so sales of books, records and museum attendance soared and laws were rewritten to permit works of art and literature to use virtually any language and to represent virtually any subject, and to protect almost any kind of speech. American industry doubled its output and consumer choice expanded dramatically. The income gap was the smallest in history and the ideological differences between the two major political parties were minor leading to investment in social programmes. People cared; ideas mattered; people believed in liberty and democracy and authenticity and having lived through a worldwide depression that lasted almost ten years, people were eager for a fresh start. A monumental work of 857pp we are delighted to offer at a discount.