1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910452878703321

Autore

Friedman Andrew

Titolo

Covert Capital : Landscapes of Denial and the Making of U.S. Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia / / Andrew Friedman

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, CA : , : University of California Press, , [2013]

©2013

ISBN

0-520-95668-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (428 p.)

Collana

American Crossroads ; ; 37

Disciplina

973.92

Soggetti

Virginia, Northern -- Buildings, structures, etc

Intelligence service - History - United States

Federal areas within states - Virginia

Electronic books.

Virginia, Northern History 20th century

United States Foreign relations 20th century

Virginia, Northern Emigration and immigration Government policy

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. The Covert Intimacies of Langley and Dulles -- 2. At Home with the CIA -- 3. Saigon Road: The Co-Constituted Landscape of Northern Virginia and South Vietnam -- 4. The Fall of South Vietnam and the Transnational Intimacies of Falls Church, Arlington, and McLean -- 5. Iran-Contra as Built Space: U.S. Imperial Tehran in Exile and Edge City's Central American Presence -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

The capital of the U.S. Empire after World War II was not a city. It was an American suburb. In this innovative and timely history, Andrew Friedman chronicles how the CIA and other national security institutions created a U.S. imperial home front in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. In this covert capital, the suburban landscape provided a cover for the workings of U.S. imperial power, which shaped domestic suburban life. The Pentagon and the CIA built two of the largest office buildings in the country there during and after the war that anchored a new imperial culture and social world. As the U.S.



expanded its power abroad by developing roads, embassies, and villages, its subjects also arrived in the covert capital as real estate agents, homeowners, builders, and landscapers who constructed spaces and living monuments that both nurtured and critiqued postwar U.S. foreign policy. Tracing the relationships among American agents and the migrants from Vietnam, El Salvador, Iran, and elsewhere who settled in the southwestern suburbs of D.C., Friedman tells the story of a place that recasts ideas about U.S. immigration, citizenship, nationalism, global interconnection, and ethical responsibility from the post-WW2 period to the present. Opening a new window onto the intertwined history of the American suburbs and U.S. foreign policy, Covert Capital will also give readers a broad interdisciplinary and often surprising understanding of how U.S. domestic and global histories intersect in many contexts and at many scales.American Crossroads, 37