European intellectuals of the 1950s dismissed American culture as nothing more than cowboy movies and the A-bomb. In response, American cultural diplomats tried to show that the United States had something to offer beyond military might and commercial exploitation. Through literary magazines, traveling art exhibits, touring musical shows, radio programs, book translations, and conferences, they deployed the revolutionary aesthetics of modernism to prove—particularly to the leftists whose Cold War loyalties they hoped to secure—that American art and literature were aesthetically rich and culturally significant.

Yet by repurposing modernism, American diplomats and cultural authorities turned the avant-garde into the establishment. They remade the once revolutionary movement into a content-free collection of artistic techniques and styles suitable for middlebrow consumption. Cold War Modernists documents how the CIA, the State Department, and private cultural diplomats transformed modernist art and literature into pro-Western propaganda during the first decade of the Cold War. Drawing on interviews, previously unknown archival materials, and the stories of such figures and institutions as William Faulkner, Stephen Spender, Irving Kristol, James Laughlin, and Voice of America, Barnhisel reveals how the U.S. government reconfigured modernism as a trans-Atlantic movement, a joint endeavor between American and European artists, with profound implications for the art that followed and for the character of American identity.

"[A] groundbreaking book." - Open Letters Monthly

"Making good use of archival sources, Mr. Barnhisel provides an engaging and informative survey." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Cold War Modernists makes a valuable addition to the grown literature on the cultural aspects of the Cold War. Thoroughly researched and written in a compact and readable style, it is a work that sets itself a viable task and accomplishes it." - Souciant

"An exquisite, intricate, and satisfying study.... Essential." - Choice

"A welcome addition to the scholarship on modernism after the Second World War." - Textual Practice

"An important source for scholars and students of Cold War culture.... Thorough and illuminating, offering a rich new account of a story we thought to be familiar." - The Review of English Studies

"Greg Barnhisel's Cold War Modernists charts impeccably the transformation of twentieth-century modernism from abrasive (European) avant-garde to a stylistic iconography of Western (American) freedom.... It is one of those commendable books that invites you to revisit what has already been said and makes you realize that the established story, up till now, was lacking." - Diplomatic History

"Barnhisel's book will rightly become the go-to reference for critics and historians of the Cultural Cold War.... Cold War Modernists focus on the arts-adjacent institutions that filter literary and artistic value provides a new way to think about how and why modernism has had such a lasting legacy in the 20th century." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"Coherently organized, superbly researched, and judiciously balanced." - Journal of Cold War Studies

"An important source for scholars and students of Cold War culture. The account it offers of cultural diplomacy in the Truman and Eisenhower years is both thorough and illuminating, offering a rich new account of a story we thought to be familiar." - Review of English Studies

"Barnhisel's book has a good deal to teach historians of the Cold War located outside art and literature departments.... He sifts through dozens of unpublished primary sources and writes with narrative drive as well as learned, enlivening wit." - Journal of American History

"The greatest merits of this work are its grand scope, clear argument, and impressive archival research; the writing is crisp, witty, and accessible.... [An] outstanding book.... [Cold War Modernists] deserves wide readership. There is no denying that Barnhisel has contributed to our collective understanding of modernism and its role in Cold War cultural diplomacy." - The American Historical Review

"Elegant and richly researched" - Against the Current

"A refreshing contribution to scholarship on the so-called cultural Cold War.... Cold War Modernists displays a literary critic's sensitivity to rhetorical nuance combined with an intellectual historian's grasp of cultural, social and political contexts. It is written with style, assurance and at times with wit." - Literature & History

"[Cold War Modernists] is an impressive achievement, based on extensive archival research, a close reading of the most important secondary literature, and some key interviews." - American Diplomacy

"In Cold War Modernists, Greg Barnhisel has contributed generously and decisively to midcentury cultural and political history, to the story of modernism’s afterlife, and to our capacity to understand how that afterlife includes us still." - Modernism/modernity

"This is a well-researched book with appropriate illustrations and an excellent selection of notes. It is a much needed addition to the growing works on US cultural diplomacy and will have particular appeal to pop culture scholars in art, literature, and the performing arts." - Journal of American Culture