Matthew W. Dunne, A Cold War State of Mind: Brainwashing and Postwar American Society. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013. 281 pp. $27.95.

In 1954, 21 U.S. soldiers captured by Communist forces during the Korean War refused repatriation and chose instead to remain behind the so-called Bamboo Curtain. Along with other examples of disloyalty among captured U.S. personnel, the actions of these soldiers generated a firestorm in the U.S. press as journalists such as Edward Hunter argued that Communist captors must have used advanced psychological conditioning (what he termed “brainwashing”) to turn once loyal U.S. citizens against their own country. In A Cold War State of Mind, historian Matthew Dunne explores in detail the panic these news stories produced in the United States. Although scholars such as Susan Carruthers and Ron Robin have covered parts of this story, Dunne provides a much more comprehensive account, using an impressive array of sources, from Hollywood prisoner of war (POW) films, congressional debates, journalist accounts, courtroom documents, and much more, to demonstrate the history of...