Someone Is Out to Get Us

A Not So Brief History of Cold War Paranoia and Madness

By: Brian Brown

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 17 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's Summary

From UFOs to Dr. Strangelove, LSD experiments to Richard Nixon, author Brian Brown investigates the paranoid, panicked history of the Cold War.

In Someone Is Out to Get Us, Brian T. Brown explores the delusions, absurdities, and best-kept secrets of the Cold War, during which the United States fought an enemy of its own making for over 40 years - and nearly scared itself to death in the process. The nation chose to fear a chimera, a rotting communist empire that couldn't even feed itself, only for it to be revealed that what lay behind the Iron Curtain was only a sad Potemkin village. 

In fact, one of the greatest threats to our national security may have been our closest ally. The most effective spy cell the Soviets ever had was made up of aristocratic Englishmen schooled at Cambridge. Establishing a communist peril but lacking proof, J. Edgar Hoover became our Big Brother, and Joseph McCarthy went hunting for witches. Richard Nixon stepped into the spotlight as an opportunistic, ruthless Cold Warrior; his criminal cover-up during a dark presidency was exposed by a Deep Throat in a parking garage. 

Someone Is Out to Get Us is the true and complete account of a long-misunderstood period of history during which lies, conspiracies, and paranoia led Americans into a state of madness and misunderstanding, too distracted by fictions to realize that the real enemy was looking back at them in the mirror the whole time. 

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.  

©2019 Brian Brown (P)2019 Twelve

Critic Reviews

"Readers who love Cold War-era U.S. history will glom onto Brown's book, even if they come away agreeing with the old Pogo comic strip: 'We have met the enemy, and he is us.'" (Booklist)

"An alternative title for this irreverent romp of a read might be Everything You Wanted to Know About the Cold War (But Were Afraid to Ask), as Brian Brown takes us on a wild ride through a time in American life when public enemy number one was an ethereal political concept that drove everything from policy to popular culture. In an era in which Americans should be (and are) afraid of some very real things, whether the integrity of our elections, global climate change, or the twisted powers of social media, this book enters the dialogue by chronicling the mayhem and misery of a time when fear overwhelmed our ability to see anything for what it really was. Brown reminds us that throughout those four decades, America's greatest enemy was the one it created in its own paranoid collective mind, a lesson that should not be lost on us today." (Amy Bass, author of One Goal) 

"Brown provides us with a witty and fast-paced look at the Cold War, Soviet espionage and covert mischief, and how these impacted and helped shape the course of American pop culture for more than three decades." (Bill Yenne, historian and author of Secret Weapons of the Cold War, B-52 Stratofortress, and Area 51 Black Jets) 

Boring yet interesting at the same time

I heard about this book on coast to coast am. I really wanted to like it but find myself checked out while listening to it. it's a lot of unnecessary facts that are trying to tell a story most of us already know but not in a easy to follow order.

I also don't usually mind getting cussing, but for this book it just seemed out of place and lazy sometimes. considered getting my money back, but I finished it.

There are a few stories that I enjoyed and had not heard. The person who read the book did a great job.

Absolutely Brilliant I have read 4 time's

So fascinating to look at history today and realise how crazy Government and Military where back then. They where so off it's unreal. The amount of people who suffered through McCarthy era also. Communism was such a big thing and yet totally not believable at all well at least now. It literally got blamed for every protest movement back then. Can't recommend this book enough.

Brilliant!

This is absolutely great as a quick skim through all the salient points of the Cold War political psyche. I liked the colloquial style, it felt chatty and informal, which with some of the weird things that went on at the time, actually helps!

Narrator was good, doing accents and impersonations in non-fiction usually annoys me, but he was very good at them.