The Ordinary Cold War: The Ground Observer Corps and Midcentury Militarization in the United States

During the 1950s hundreds of thousands of Americans volunteered for the Ground Observer Corps (GOC) , a US Air Force-sponsored organization that enlisted "sky watchers" to occupy observation posts and scan the horizon for unfamiliar aircraft. A World War II initiative revived during the early years of the Cold War, the GOC has received insufficient scholarly attention. Here, Farish offers a comprehensive history of the corps, significant because it illustrates the customary and commonplace dimensions of the Cold War in the daily routines of many Americans-dimensions often overshadowed by the biographies, events, and technologies that dominate histories of the era. The result is a more thorough attempt to document the elusive but profoundly consequential process of militarization.