PULP EPIC. MALE. MAN’S ILLUSTRATED. MAN’S ADVENTURE. BRIGADE. VALOR. You’ve seen these magazines before. You either grew up with them or you’ve seen their bizarre covers online. There’s always a man with rippling muscles, sometimes he’s fighting a pack of weasels, other times he’s eying a scantily clad dame. Sometime’s there’s a Nazi, sometime’s there’s a woman in an SS uniform with a few buttons missing.

The Pulp magazines of the Cold War shaped the culture and thinking of an entire generation of men. The sons of World War II veterans learned a fantasy version of the war from lads mags and then took those fantasies with them when they rushed headlong into their own war: Vietnam.

Here to tell us all about the Pulp magazines and how they shaped our perceptions of the Cold War and Vietnam is Gregory A Daddis. Daddis is a retired Army Colonel who served in both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He’s a professor of history and the USS Midway Chair in Modern History at San Diego State University. His new book is Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines.

• Recorded 10/29

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