Jane Pavitt: Fear and Fashion in the Cold War (2008)

From Barbarella’s bikini to vinyl radiation suits to high-tech jewelry, the Cold War’s impact on fashion was unmistakable.

Atomic anxieties, the space race, technological developments, and the first forays into “super-reality” led to innovations in materials, the cybernetic visions of the 1960s, and a range of surprising responses from artists, filmmakers, scientists, and designers. With a stunning selection of images, including photographs by fashion luminaries such as John French, Fear and Fashion in the Cold War explores how the image of the body was shaped by Cold War concerns between 1945 and 1970. In this engaging book, Jane Pavitt incorporates military, political, and scientific research in an engrossing discussion of how countercultural theories and experiences in the later 1960s shaped an alternative view of the “Cold War Body.”

Publisher V&A, London, 2008
ISBN 1851775447, 9781851775446
128 pages
via Royal College of Art

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Stephen Graham: Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (2010)

A powerful exposé of how political violence operates through the spaces of urban life.

Cities are the new battleground of our increasingly urban world. From the slums of the global South to the wealthy financial centers of the West, Cities Under Siege traces the spread of political violence through the sites, spaces, infrastructure and symbols of the world’s rapidly expanding metropolitan areas.

Drawing on a wealth of original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking shadow enemies. Urban inhabitants have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned and controlled. Graham examines the transformation of Western armies into high-tech urban counter-insurgency forces. He looks at the militarization and surveillance of international borders, the use of ‘security’ concerns to suppress democratic dissent, and the enacting of legislation to suspend civilian law. In doing so, he reveals how the New Military Urbanism permeates the entire fabric of urban life, from subway and transport networks hardwired with high-tech ‘command and control’ systems to the insidious militarization of a popular culture corrupted by the all-pervasive discourse of ‘terrorism.’

Publisher Verso Books, London, 2010
ISBN 1844678369, 9781844678365
432 pages

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Jon Ronson: The Men Who Stare at Goats (2005)

In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known accepted military practice — and indeed, the laws of physics — they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them.

Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren’t joking. What’s more, they’re back and fighting the War on Terror.

With firsthand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult from San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these and many more questions.

Publisher Simon & Schuster, 2005
ISBN 0743241924, 9780743241922
272 pages

review (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)
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