Overview

In Freeze!, Henry Richard Maar III chronicles the rise of the transformative and transnational Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Amid an escalating Cold War that pitted the nuclear arsenal of the United States against that of the Soviet Union, the grassroots peace movement emerged sweeping the nation and uniting people around the world. The solution for the arms race that the Campaign proposed: a bilateral freeze on the building, testing, and deployment of nuclear weapons on the part of two superpowers of the US and the USSR. That simple but powerful proposition stirred popular sentiment and provoked protest in the streets and on screen from New York City to London to Berlin. Movie stars and scholars, bishops and reverends, governors and congress members, and, ultimately, US President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev took a stand for or against the Freeze proposal. With the Reagan administration so openly discussing the prospect of winnable and survivable nuclear warfare like never before, the Freeze movement forcefully translated decades of private fears into public action. Drawing upon extensive archival research in recently declassified materials, Maar illuminates how the Freeze campaign demonstrated the power and importance of grassroots peace activism in all levels of society. The Freeze movement played an instrumental role in shaping public opinion and American politics, helping establish the conditions that would bring the Cold War to an end.

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9781501760884

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Maar's Freeze! skillfully shows the interplay between activists, public opinion, and political leaders, and should put to rest the outdated notion that social movements cannot and do not influence foreign policy. The book is also well-written and eminently useful for college courses on nuclear weapons, foreign policy, and the 1980s. * Peace & Change * Maar's important examination of the freeze campaign highlights the challenges of that effort but also the ingredients that brought success to the movement: a clear mobilizing narrative, the development of creative grassroots strategies, and an appeal to moral values in partnership with the religious community. * Arms Control Association *

Maar's Freeze! skillfully shows the interplay between activists, public opinion, and political leaders, and should put to rest the outdated notion that social movements cannot and do not influence foreign policy. The book is also well-written and eminently useful for college courses on nuclear weapons, foreign policy, and the 1980s. * Peace & Change * Maar's important examination of the freeze campaign highlights the challenges of that effort but also the ingredients that brought success to the movement: a clear mobilizing narrative, the development of creative grassroots strategies, and an appeal to moral values in partnership with the religious community. * Arms Control Association *

Maar's Freeze! skillfully shows the interplay between activists, public opinion, and political leaders, and should put to rest the outdated notion that social movements cannot and do not influence foreign policy. The book is also well-written and eminently useful for college courses on nuclear weapons, foreign policy, and the 1980s. * Peace & Change *

Author Information

Henry Richard Maar III is Lecturer in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and California State University, Northridge. Follow him on X @HMaar.

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