Jerry Carrier is the author of The Making of the Slave Class and Tapestry: The History and Consequences of America’s Culture. He is a nationally-recognized educator in class, poverty, politics, affordable housing and economic development. He has taught and developed curriculum for universities, state and local governments, schools, and non profits. He has also guest lectured at ten colleges and universities.

Mr. Carrier was an adjunct faculty member at the National Graduate School for Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University, and was faculty for the White Earth Tribal College and for the National Neighborworks Training Institutes. He worked for over thirty years in community economic development and public administration as an executive director of several nonprofits, a community action agency, a housing authority, and in local and tribal governments as an economic development director and planner. He has also been a city manager of six cities. Carrier has served on the Boards of Director of five nonprofits and a school.

Mr. Carrier’s columns on class, economics, poverty, and politics have been published in over a dozen newspapers and he has been a contributing writer to many nonprofit and government texts on these subjects. He has served various roles in many political campaigns and has held positions in the Democratic Party at the local, state and federal level. He and his wife live in Lakeville, Minnesota.

In A Long Cold War, significant events are recorded in or two sentences, as you may have read the headlines at the time. Some major events are expanded to a paragraph or more to give the reader a sense of their complexity, impact and importance....

In A Long Cold War, significant events are recorded in or two sentences, as you may have read the headlines at the time. Some major events are expanded to a paragraph or more to give the reader a sense of their complexity, impact and importance. Along with election news, headlines from the war in Vietnam, the ups and downs of racial de-segregation, and a hint of CIA activity, summaries are presented of the average salaries and prices. Each year also has summaries of what Americans were watching, listening to and reading in film, television, music and literature. The book can be read in its entirety in sequence or by each individual year to get a sense of what life was like at a specific point in history. It works as a historical reference, time line, or as a good read for the nostalgic or casual reader. It can be read in its entirety, in sequence or in parts, or year by year to get a sense of the specific times. This book shows the impact of the Cold War on the American culture, psyche and politics. It's a good read for history fans as well as nostalgic or even casual readers.

At the end of WWII the nation state version of the last man standing was the United States of America. The industrial capacity of Europe and Asia were completely destroyed by the war and the only nation of significant power that had any major industrial capacity was the United States. Even the civilian populations of the combatants in Europe, Asia and the Pacific were devastated while the American civilian population was left relatively unscathed. The US homeland, with the exception of Pearl Harbor and a few insignificant attacks, was largely untouched by the war. The US was the only major industrial power that was not destroyed. In the summer of 1945 this manufacturing capacity, coupled with America's dominate military might and the discovery and use of the atomic bomb made the US the unquestioned world power. The only armies strong enough to compete with the US were that of the USSR and to a lesser extent China in a very limited regional capacity in Korea. This post war rise to power also saw the US become the new leader of the English speaking world as the United Kingdom's power declined and Britain became an appendage to American power. This was a bitter pill for the British to swallow as they watched the sun setting on the once vast British Empire where they had once fondly boasted that the sun never set. They were now forced to recognize that they owed their WWII victory to American and Soviet power and that they were now secondary players in a new Cold War. The Western European powers and Japan pledged their allegiance to the US as they saw and feared the Soviet Union's domination of Eastern Europe and Communist China's rising dominance in East Asia. After the war, the Europeans appeared powerless stop the demise of their colonies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as independence movements arose. The colonial powers quickly sought to preserve some of their colonies with American assistance. America's rivalry and subsequent Cold War competition with the Soviets and China was used by the Western Europeans to persuade America to assist them in retaining their colonial powers as this nationalist freedom movement was frequently labeled (or mislabeled) "communist." America then became a primary hindrance to these movements. The colony of French Indo-China (Vietnam) was the most calamitous engagement for the US, as the US replaced the French as the colonial power, but there were many other American interventions with disastrous results. America's foreign policy in the last half of the 20th century was consumed by these movements and their fear they would tilt toward communism or socialism. President Eisenhower and the two brothers, John Foster Dulles his Secretary of State and Allan Dulles the head of the CIA were the primary proponents of this anti-nationalist contingency in the US. They called it the domino theory. If one fell, the others would follow. They saw the USSR and China as competition to dominate and spread their influence over the former colonies. Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers labeled most freedom movements as communistic or socialistic and they fought their cold war over this "Third World." In 1949 when China became communist and the USSR created the atomic bomb, the US feared that communism would overrun the globe with nations falling to Sino-Soviet communism again like a of a row of toppling dominoes. Communism was expanding in the post colonial world, but it was more a reaction against their colonial masters than the success of a Sino-Soviet master plot as the Americans and Western Europeans claimed. China, Vietnam and even Korea were never Soviet puppet states, as the US maintained. Communism never really threatened the US and these fears of a communist takeover of the US were mostly paranoia and/or propaganda. Americans became xenophobic, they feared the other. In 1945 Americans were just entering this Cold War, a long and sometimes violent war that would last for about forty-seven years. In the wake of WWII and the Great Depression, America was also hungry for consumer goods. Now that the industrial powerhouses of Europe had been destroyed, Americans with their unchallenged industrial capacity were about to experience their best economic times. They would see the creation of new consumer products that would revolutionize the world. This is the story of America in those times, the prosperity, the paranoia and the power. It was America's time. A Note about the Cold War Most look at 1945, the end of WWII, as the beginning of the Cold War. However, some disagree. Europe and America's distrust of communists dates back to at least the late 19th century ; and then WWI and the Russian civil war that began as the war with Germany was nearing an and. The October Revolution ignited in 1917. The main invasion took place in Vladivostok and was called the Siberian Expedition. The allies occupied the port and surrounding areas; the last of them withdrew in 1922, finally concluding that Czarist Russia would not return. The Americans, British, French and Canadians also invaded Northern Russia in the Archangel Campaign and occupied parts of Northern Russia until 1920. Some historians mark these invasions as the real beginning of the Cold War between the Soviets and the West. In October 18, 2008, Nick Holdsworth (reporting for the British newspaper The Telegraph) reported that secret documents showed that Stalin made an offer to the British, Poles and French in August of 1939, just before war broke out with Germany, to put a million Soviet troops in Poland on the German border to smother Hitler's ambitions. It was ignored by the Allies. The primary reason given for the British, French and Poles rejecting Stalin's offer was that some felt that Stalin was as ambitious as Hitler and would occupy Eastern Europe, including Poland, and that the million Soviet troops would never leave. Two weeks later Stalin signed his notorious treaty dividing Poland with Germany, and Hitler invaded Poland, starting WWII. Some see this reluctance to ally with the Soviet Union against Germany in 1939 as the start of the Cold War.

July 11, 1955: In a mixture of American jingoism and Christian fervor the US Congress passed legislation to place the words "In god we trust" on its most holy thing, the US currency. July 15, 1958: In Lebanon, a civil war broke out between the Maronite Christian government and the Lebanese Muslims. An invasion from Egypt and other Muslim countries appeared imminent and President Eisenhower, at the Lebanese government's request, sent in approximately 14,000 US Army and Marines. They were...

July 11, 1955: In a mixture of American jingoism and Christian fervor the US Congress passed legislation to place the words "In god we trust" on its most holy thing, the US currency. July 15, 1958: In Lebanon, a civil war broke out between the Maronite Christian government and the Lebanese Muslims. An invasion from Egypt and other Muslim countries appeared imminent and President Eisenhower, at the Lebanese government's request, sent in approximately 14,000 US Army and Marines. They were supported by 70 US Navy ships. This was the first use of the invasive Eisenhower Doctrine. The Christian-dominated government was able to repel attacks from the Lebanese Muslims, and Egypt backed off. The US troops left on October 25, 1958, but their invasion would long be remembered by the Muslim world.