This book is a study of U.S. propaganda strategy and some of its major proponents during the seminal Cold War period of the 1950s. John Allen Stern delves into the lives of Dwight Eisenhower and, most notably, C.D. Jackson, his chief adviser for psychological warfare. His aim is to present a comprehensive analysis of so-called “democratic propaganda” as a tool in confronting post-World War II communist expansion. Stern focuses on how such propaganda was employed as a method of celebrating the virtues of what we call the “American way of life.” What unfolds is a story of how one individual, C.D. Jackson, evolved different modes of traditional advertising to construct an effective counterbalance to Soviet propaganda in Europe and around the world. Stern assays the efforts of these American “psywarriors” in ultimately stemming the Soviet quest for world domination and ending the Cold War.
