Review of The Cold War as Rhetoric: The Beginnings, 1945-1950

Barbie Zelizer, University of Pennsylvania

Document Type Review

Zelizer, Barbie. (1993). Review of the book The Cold War as Rhetoric: The Beginnings, 1945-1950, by L. B. Hinds & T. O. Windt Jr. Journal of Communication, 43(1), 178-180. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01254.x

Abstract

This book addresses political correctness of a different age. It focuses on the construction of the Cold War, when “politically correct” thinking about the Soviet Union, China, and other Communist-bloc nations was recognized as strategic to the development of American foreign policy after World War 11. Authors Lynn Boyd Hinds and Theodore Otto Windt,Jr. argue that the waging of the Cold War depended on an elaborate set of rhetorical formulations employed by the powers-that-be. The American government used rhetoric not only to justify its policy vis-à-vis the Communist bloc but to construct the political reality from which such policy emerged