Hi all,

Just looking for recommendations for books on the cold War, either us or ussr focused

  • gammison [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I'm a fan of studying the development of cybernetics, mathematics, computer science and science more generally as it intersected with cold war politics and both reinforced each other. Some really good works are

    • The Closed World by Edwards
    • The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford by Leslie
    • The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision
    • How disunity matters to the history of cybernetics in the human sciences in the United States
    • How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (still see remnants of that today, the DoD has a philosophy division)
    • From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics by Slava Gerovitch (monumental work btw)
    • The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World by Egle Rindzevicuiute
    • Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism by S.M. Amadae.

    I have others, should just make another syllabus post.