The controversial 24-part series Cold War, produced by CNN, is now being foisted on classrooms across America thanks to the self-interested philanthropy of CNN honcho Ted Turner and his turnerlearning.com. While students will learn some important things about the Berlin airlift and the Prague uprising of 1968, the segments focusing on McCarthyism and the Vietnam war are tendentious in the predictable direction. For needed balance, educators may want to order as a companion volume CNN's Cold War Documentary: Issues and Controversy, published by Hoover Institution Press and edited by Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman (who reviewed the CNN series in the Nov. 2, 1998 WEEKLY STANDARD). The book offers essays from such distinguished scholars as Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes and a fuller picture of the Cold War, including the parts that CNN slighted -- say, the role of celebrities like "Hanoi Jane" Fonda (before she was Mrs. Turner) in cheerleading for the North Vietnamese.
John Cleese, quoted in the London, Daily Telegraph, April 3, 2000