Total Cold War

Book excerpt: Osgood focuses on major campaigns such as Atoms for Peace, People-to-People, and cultural exchange programs. Drawing on recently declassified documents that record U.S. psychological operations in some three dozen countries, he tells how U.S. propaganda agencies presented everyday life in America to the world: its citizens living full, happy lives in a classless society where economic bounty was shared by all. Osgood further investigates the ways in which superpower disarmament negotiations were used as propaganda maneuvers in the battle for international public opinion. He also reexamines the early years of the space race, focusing especially on the challenge to American propagandists posed by the Soviet launch of Sputnik.