In the first years of the Cold War, the British Ministry of Works constructed temporary houses for over 150,000 families to meet an acute housing shortage. These new houses were built with a standard design of kitchen. The model of that kitchen, which became a reference for the time, was commonly associated by the public with the American style, that is to say, with the modern and commercial kitchen that acted as a symbol of the American way of life for the rest of the world. In reality, it was inspired by a famous German example of the 1920s: the Frankfurt kitchen. This perfect example of modernist design, however, was politically suspect, owing to its reference to German, pre-Nazi, socialist ideas.

This anecdote, related in the chapter by Julian Holder, encapsulates some of the main topics of this fundamental and innovative book, edited by two well-known scholars, who challenge some of the commonplaces of the present historiography of the Cold War.

In the first place, our attention is drawn to the domestic sphere, questioning the very characteristics of the Cold War. Was it only a subject for national parliaments, military headquarters, mass media, public institutions, and public arenas in general, or was it rather a cultural matter that deeply involved the private sphere of the people? The answer of this book is that domesticity, perfectly symbolized by the kitchen, was in the front line in the political battle between East and West. It was so, as the famous ‘kitchen debate’ between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev at a Moscow fair in 1959 showed, because it vividly highlighted in a propagandistic way the contrast between American liberal democracy, founded upon consumption and individual satisfaction, and Soviet centralism, where the individual’s comfort was sacrificed to the national command economy.

This book questions many aspects of the current narrative about the Cold War, starting, for instance, with reactions from the Soviet side. As Susan E. Reid underlines, apart from the fact that there was an effort to take into consideration consumers’ needs in the Soviet Union, the main response there was a very critical reception of the American message. Projected onto a different scale of values, the American kitchen display caused visitors to the 1959 fair some puzzlement, as we can see from their comments: ‘And this is one of the greatest nations? I feel sorry for the Americans, judging by your exhibition. Does your life really consist only of kitchens?’ (p.?100).

Another important point concerns the content of the idea of an American kitchen. If Greg Castillo and Cristina Carbone tell us how this image as a symbol of comfort and democracy (‘the right to choose’) was created with a precise strategy of communication inside the Marshall Plan, Ruth Oldenziel argues against the same notion of an American kitchen. She shows that, besides the successful ‘representations’ on occasions such as international exhibitions, the reality was different: many diverse brands of kitchen competed, and shining, enormous, gadget-filled kitchens were more the exception than the rule, even in the United States.

Beside this, in opposition to the American model, there was an ancient and solid European tradition of design and production that found its symbol in the famous Frankfurt kitchen (to which an interesting contribution by Martin Heßler is devoted), although many other countries were active on the scene in adapting or proposing new forms. One thinks of the ‘Swedish kitchen’, or the already quoted British example, not to mention the particular case of Finland, a sort of political and cultural bridge between East and West, where an extraordinary indigenous tradition of design developed (Kirsi Saarikangas).

The strength of this book is its focus on the many protagonists of this history. We see here manufacturers with their commercial strategies; mediators (designers, engineers, and experts in general), who legitimated their power thanks to the appeal of science and tried to educate consumers, inevitably imposing their own vision of domestic space; then?distributors; and, above all, consumers. These last, often neglected in historiographical reconstructions, become important protagonists here, with their own needs and ideas about homes, technology,?and kitchens. This is why they ended up?modifying, transforming, sometimes even completely re-thinking the structures imposed by producers and mediators. Such was the case of the transformations that occurred in the ‘original’ Frankfurt kitchens in Germany (because of the high costs of electricity, for instance) or of the complex adaptations of this model to a very different environment in Turkey; or again with the different ways in which women entered, or tried to enter, into the co-production of modern kitchens in the Netherlands (Liesbeth Bervoets). On the other side of the Iron Curtain we can see an attempt to create a sort of consumption junction in socialist East Germany, involving manufacturers, experts, and users, plus party and state officials, in a failed but interesting case (Karin Zachmann). The final result therefore resembles a dialogue in multiple directions more than the implementation of a precise model born in a specific political and cultural context.

Among the main actors, the state cannot be forgotten, especially in Europe. It was present both in directly building houses and as a backer or legitimator of producers and mediators – not least because the kitchen is the terminal of a complex net of water, electricity, and gas supplies, as well as the final connection of a long commercial chain (as Shane Hamilton underlines by introducing the case of the first supermarkets in Yugoslavia). At the same time, transnational influences were always present and effective, as we see in Matthew Hilton’s article about the creation of consumers’ organizations, whose role cannot be underestimated in the general picture.

The construction of the modern kitchen, with its manifold and conflicting results, is obviously tied to the gender issue. The architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky created the Frankfurt kitchen inspired by socialist ideas and with the aim of liberating women: they could finally leave the house, work, and enter fully into the life of society. In many cultural contexts, however, this new kitchen ended up strengthening the pre-existing cultural traditions, and tied women even more firmly to a specific role inside the house, turning them into ‘modern housewives’ (as clearly emerges in Esra Akcan’s essay on the experience of this innovative architect in Turkey). The new technological environment played an ambivalent role, since it became meaningful according to the cultural context in which it was placed.

In conclusion, the American kitchen won the political battle in Europe and became an important propagandist reference, to the point of being used to domesticate the concept of nuclear energy, as Irene Cieraad shows for the Netherlands. However, it lost its battle in the practical field, as Ruth Oldenziel demonstrates, in favour of a more flexible, heterogeneous model, in part nationally characterized and in part transnationally inspired: the result of historical contingencies.

The book consists of four parts, corresponding to the ‘representation’ of the American kitchen in various contexts and its positive and negative reactions; the identification of alternative European kitchen models, acting as forms of counter-narrative; the interactions between American and European proposals; and, finally, the historiographical discussion on the ‘kitchen debate’ and the transnational role of consumers’ organizations. It represents without any doubt an excellent example of research, able to focus on some key words and fundamental concepts of the present debate, drawing our attention to notions such as consumption junctions, producer–mediator–consumer chains, the intertwining of public and private consumption, the role of geopolitical context in the private sphere, the multiplicity of political arenas, and transnational circulation of models and consumer goods among nations. In this way, the book sheds new light on some deep implications of the Cold War and its consequences at a personal level, showing how ‘everyday technology’ can become an important weapon. Well structured and rich with excellent and original contributions from scholars from different countries, in many respects it sets a model for the future development of studies on the Cold War and modern technology.