Introduction
PART I THE STRAIGHT STORY AND THE DUAL NATURE
1. Appearance, Containment, and Atomic Power
2. History, Science, and Hiroshima
PART II CONTAINMENT CULTURE
3. Rhetoric, Sanity, and the Cold War: The Significance of Holden Caulfield's Testimony
4. God's Law and the Wide Screen: The Ten Commandments as Cold War "Epic"
5. Lady and (or) the Tramp: Sexual Containment and the Domestic Playboy
PART III DOUBLE OR NOTHING
6. The Invasion of Postmodernism: The Catch-22 of the Bay of Pigs and Liberty Valance
7. The Rules for Free Speech: Speech Act Theory and the Free Speech Movement
PART IV TWO NATIONS TOO
8. My Country Too: Time, Place, and African American Identity in the Work of John A. Williams
9. Race, Rights, Gender, and Personal Narrative: The Archaeology of "Self" in Meridian
CODA DEMOCRACY
10. Failed Cultural Narratives: America in the Postwar Era and the Story of Democracy
Conclusion.