this Book Explores A Widely Lived Yet Little Remembered Facet Of America's Cultural And Political History: The Cold War As Experienced At The Grassroots Level. Here, Fried Traces The Cresting Of Modern Patriotic Observance During World War Ii And Then Shows How Patriotic And Civic Activists Afterwards Labored To Recreate A Remembered Unity And Commitment In The Tension-filled Cold War Era. A Variety Of National And Local Entities Mounted Campaigns To Sell America To The Americans Through Rededication Celebrations Like Know Your America Week And Freedom Week. The American Heritage Foundation Wheeled Out The Freedom Train, Which Carried Seminal Documents Of The Nation's Past To Railroad Depots Across The Us. Fried Revisits The 1950 Communist Invasion Of Mosinee, Wisconsin, When Ersatz Stalinists Harassed And Bullied Citizens And The Town's Eateries Served Only Potato Soup And Black Bread. He Also Depicts The Creation And Inauguration Of New Patriotic Events Like Loyalty Day And Armed Forces Day.

meticulously Researched, This Book Recreates A Colorful, Sometimes Comical, And Always Revealing Dimension Of Our History.

with The End Of The Cold War, Scholars Can Examine That Era From A Broader And Deeper Perspective Than Previously Possible. This Book Reveals The Concerted Governmental Effort To Overcome American Cultural Complacency Through Staged Patriotism As A National Strategy Against The Communist Challenge. Traditional Holidays, For Example, Became Serious, Legislated Pageants. Fried (history, Univ. Of Illinois; Nightmare In Red, Oxford Univ., 1991) Covers The Sanctification Of The American Flag, The Implementation Of The Pledge Of Allegiance, And Other Media Campaigns To Sell Americanism. Many Of These New Stories Confirm Alexis De Tocqueville's Prescient Insight From The Early 19th Century That Warned About The Tyranny Of The Majority. Readers May Be Comforted, However, That Post-cold War Political Correctness Fads Likely Will Be No More Enduring Than Those Adopted During The Cold War. Recommended For Public And Academic Libraries.william D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport