Bhakti Shringarpure, "Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital" (Routledge, 2019)

Bhakti Shringarpure has written a fascinating, multidimensional analysis of the Cold War and decolonization and the often-under-explored connections between these events. In her book, Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital (Routledge, 2019), she integrates a variety of disciplinary perspectives while also weaving together the encounters and reverberations between the Cold War and decolonization and the post-colonial experience. This study takes on the political understandings of what transpired during the Cold War period in terms of the bipolar framework and what transpired in the Global South as the formerly occupying powers were leaving countries and areas they had colonized, only to be replaced by many a proxy war or occupation in these same spaces and nations. Shringarpure also makes the connection between the hard power, and hot and cold aspects of the Cold War, with the use of soft power by the western powers, especially the British and United States, to infiltrate aspects of the Anglophone world in ways that are still with us. The second part of the book examines the cultural, literary, and artistic aspects of the Cold War, especially as pursued by western intelligence services. This is an important and engaging study that will interest scholars and students across a host of disciplines.

Lilly J. Goren is Professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-author of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury 2015). She can be found on Twitter @gorenlj.

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