Daniel Bessner Daniel Bessner is the Joff Hanauer Honors Associate Professor in Western Civilization in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell, 2018).

First-Person Shooter Ideology | The Cultural Contradictions of Call of Duty

Daniel Bessner

For decades, historians of the twentieth century have debated why, exactly, the United States fought a protracted, destructive, and ultimately pointless Cold War with the Soviet Union. Some have claimed that the United States was simply reacting rationally to Joseph Stalin’s provocations; “the brave and essential response of free men to communist aggression,” in the words of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Others, including Stephen Wertheim and myself, have pointed to the...