Nuclear Threats, Nuclear Fear, and the Cold War of the 1980s (Publications of the German Historical Institute)

By: Eckart Conze and Martin Klimke and Jeremy Varon

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Synopsis: This book brings together cutting-edge scholarship from the United States and Europe to address political as well as cultural responses to both the arms race of the 1980s and the ascent of nuclear energy as a second, controversial dimension of the nuclear age. Diverse in its topics and disciplinary approaches, Nuclear Threats, Nuclear Fear and the Cold War of the 1980s makes a fundamental contribution to the emerging historiography of the 1980s as a whole. As of now, the era's nuclear tensions have been addressed by scholars mostly from the standpoint of security studies, focused on the geo-strategic deliberations of political elites and at the level of state policy. Yet nuclear anxieties, as the essays in this volume document, were so pervasive that they profoundly shaped the era's culture, its habits of mind, and its politics, far beyond the domain of policy. Brings together scholarship from the United States and Europe to examine the dynamics of anti-nuclear protest movements in the West in the 1980s. Contributes to the emerging historiography of the 1980s by focusing on an under-researched aspect of the decade. Attests to the vital role of culture in communicating and popularizing anti-nuclear messages, with bearing on transformations in culture in the 1980s as a whole.