University of Massachusetts Press Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond)

In Every Home a Fortress, Thomas Bishop details the remarkable cultural history and personal stories behind an iconic figure of Cold War masculinity -- the fallout shelter father, who, with spade in hand and the canned goods he has amassed, sought to save his family from atomic warfare. Putting policy documents and presidential addresses into conversation with previously unmined personal letters, diaries, local media coverage, and antinuclear ephemera, Bishop demonstrates that the nuclear crisis years of 1957 to 1963 were not just pivotal for the history of international relations but were also a transitional moment in the social histories of the white middle class and American fatherhood. During this era, public concerns surrounding civil defense shaped private family conversations, and the fallout shelter emerged as a site at which ideas of nationhood, national security, and masculinity collided with the complex reality of trying to raise and protect a family in the nuclear age. Review Moving beyond the customary view of Cold War civil defense as a monumental failure to mobilize the public, Bishop provides an insightful, fascinating examination of fathers who took action to protect their families from the expected horror of nuclear war.--David F. Krugler, author of This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear WarBishop does yeoman's work in bringing nuclear Cold War scholarship into the realm of masculinity and makes a key contribution.--Robert A. Jacobs, author of The Dragon's Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age About the Author Thomas Bishop is senior lecturer in American history and program leader in American studies at the University of Lincoln.