Cover Image: The Free World

The Free World

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Really fascinating stuff about the major thoughts that came out after the Cold War. But apart from that, this book also gives a pretty comprehensive account of the Cold War itself, how it transpired, the key figures, the political consequences, etc.

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I mean, at the length it is, it's more like an extremely well-written and absorbing encyclopedia than it is like a book. Ending with the Vietnam War, and the comment about the victory of Stalinism, is certainly a bold choice.

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Accessible and elegant prose, thorough research and convincing portrayals of figures who believed in idea of the 'free world'... they were blinkered and Menaud shows how and shows the trajectory of the period and connections among the mainly male influential figures of the period after WW2 .. told distinctively as portrayals of people, he gets at the history of the time
Like his earlier Metaphysical club book this is really readable and gripping .. excellent and admirable ..

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I could forgive the length of this book which is almost 944 pages for the rich contents inside it. Written by the Pulitzer Prize winner Louis Menand, this book offers an interesting point of view to the Cold War period beyond the spectrum of the political sphere. It focuses on two subjects which influence human’s lives, art and thought. It begins with a brief description of the origin of the Cold War, which could be traced by a recommendation sent by George Kennan who was a US diplomat in the Soviet Union and the person who first advocated a policy of containment of Soviet expansion soon after the end of World War II. His writings inspired Truman Doctrine and US foreign policy of containing the Soviet Union.

However, many of the ideas in this book, both for art and thought originated even far before the Cold War. Some of them could be traced into European artistic influence (Paris as the world art capital in the 1920s) and the aftereffect of World War II (existentialism which gives the individual the power to change their own situations and gain freedom). Hence, I am in the opinion that this book is more about the styles of art and the thoughts that influence much of our lives in the 20th century rather than focusing solely on the Cold War since even the explanation of Cold War phenomenon only appeared in several chapters. It highlights several artistic movements, literary movements, and philosophical ideas in many parts of the world with really nice bridging from one idea to another.

Besides the abnormal length, another problem that I have regarding this book is mainly about its tendency to focus on art and thought movements only in Western bloc during the Cold War. It doesn’t describe well some literary movements that are in place in the Eastern bloc such as Socialist Realism (in the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe, mainly championed by Andrei Zhdanov and György Lukács), Epic Theatre (practised by Bertolt Brecht and his theatre company Berliner Ensemble in East Germany), or even the curious case of Boris Pasternak who won controversial Nobel Prize of Literature in 1958 (this book at least mentioned the story of Anna Akhmatova’s brief relationship with Sir Isaiah Berlin, but it’s mainly told to highlight Berlin’s achievements).

Nevertheless, this book is indeed interesting new research on the Cold War period. I like the way it provides me with rich intertextuality of ideas, which help me to expand my vocabularies of modern art and thoughts as well as providing me with further book recommendations to be read. Louis Menand writes articulately without making the readers confused about terminologies or historical facts. Each chapter of this book could be read independently. For example, readers who are interested with Sartre’s idea on existentialism could turn to Chapter 3 - Freedom and Nothingness, those who are interested with analysis on Kerouac’s On the Road and Beat generation could check Chapter 4 - Outside the Law, and those who are interested with John Cage’s musical invention which was based on the twelve-tone system could turn to Chapter 8 - The Emancipation of Dissonance.

This book will be intriguing for people with interest in modern art, modern thoughts, politics, and even the reasoning for the rise of consumerism in the 1960s. Many of the ideas in this book are simply derivative from other books published in the past. However, the way the author could connect those ideas with geopolitical issues of the Cold War is a merit in itself which expand further the discussion that we could have regarding the Cold War beyond the political sphere.

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