In her incredible new book Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and Global Disorder Since 1989, historian Penny Von Eschen identifies nostalgia as a corrosive, reactionary force in global politics and popular culture since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and explains how the lingering ghosts of the Cold War haunt our era. From George H.W. Bush hosting an official White House screening of The Hunt for Red October in 1990 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Von Eschen traces how Cold War nostalgia distorts our vision of the past and forecloses on possibilities for a peaceful future. 

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