Why read Don't Need No Thought Control?

Book cover of Don't Need No Thought Control: Western Culture in East Germany and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Book description

The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to the cultural dimension of these dramatic events, particularly the role played by Western mass media and consumer culture. With a…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Don't Need No Thought Control as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sean Eedy

Author

Weaving together the influence of film, television, sport, and punk rock, Horten’s book describes how Western media or, specifically, how the East German population’s desire for Western media and consumer culture and the regime’s efforts to satisfy those desires contributed to the peaceful revolution in 1989.

Despite assumptions that the socialist dictatorship in East Germany was omnipresent, this book, like many others about everyday life under communism, undermines that notion. Horten shows the regime locked in a downward spiral. Faced with economic crises and increasingly unable to afford domestic television and film production, the regime turned to Western imports.

This…

From Sean's list on The best books about everyday life and politics in the Soviet Bloc.