Why read Detroit's Cold War?

Book cover of Detroit's Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism

Book description

Detroit's Cold War locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on meticulous archival research focusing on Detroit, Colleen Doody shows how conflict over business values and opposition to labor, anticommunism, racial animosity, and religion led to…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Detroit's Cold War as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Hajimu Masuda

Author

I like this book because it forces us to rethink what the Cold War really was. The book identifies key figures in anti-communist crusades in post-World War II Detroit: workers, white homeowners, city officials, Catholics, and manufacturing executives, and argues that the core elements of their “anticommunism” were not fears of Soviet incursion, but sociocultural tensions at home that derived from drastic changes in wartime and postwar Detroit, which observed a sudden influx of African Americans, Southern whites, and immigrants.

Thus, the book argues that Cold War Detroit’s “anticommunism” was not a new development in the postwar era, but a…

From Hajimu's list on reconsider what the Cold War really was.