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Article: Under the mushroom cloud: the cold war has become this year's hot media topic. Taylor Downing welcomes the chance to look more critically at the era of 'mutually assured destruction'.(TODAY'S HISTORY)
- Article from:
- History Today
- Article date:
- August 1, 2008
- Author:
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What do the folloxving have in common: Tom Hanks' latest film; the winner of the 2007 Regional Visitor Attraction of the Year Award; a Channel 4 programme broadcast earlier this year; and the V&A autumn exhibition: All of them popularize and explore the Cold War. Nearly twenty years after the Wall came down and the Iron Curtain went up, the Cold War has become fashionable.
Charlie Wilson's War starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman is perhaps the most remarkable manifestation of this trend. It is a political comedy about arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. A Texan congressman, spurred on by a ...