As memories of the Cold War recede, it becomes more and more difficult to remember what it was about and why it evoked such feelings of intensity and fatalism. Fortunately, we have a gold mine of movies and novels to help us recall why an entire generation of Americans grew up ducking under school desks in air raid drills and stocking the family bomb shelter. Cold War Fantasies retrieves those times, based on the idea that a nation's history, self-concept, and collective anxiety are reflected in popular culture. In Cold War Fantasies, Ronnie Lipschutz combines an historical account of foreign and domestic politics from 1945 to 1995 with summaries and analyses of 30 novels and films contemporaneously published and produced.