Book excerpt: One of the most enduring and prolific American authors of the latter half of the twentieth century, John Updike has long been recognized by critics for his importance as a social commentator. Yet, John Updike and the Cold War is the first work to examine how Updike's views grew out of the defining context of American culture in his time -- the Cold War. Quentin Miller argues that because Updike's career began as the Cold War was taking shape in the mid-1950s, the world he creates in his entire literary oeuvre -- fiction, poetry, and nonfiction prose -- reflects the optimism and the anxiety of that decade.