Brian Brown came of age during the Watergate era, making him a member of a generation habituated to distrust the establishment. Three years ago – after stints as a print reporter, TV producer, novelist, and documentarian – he began an excavation of Cold War paranoia and madness. In the process, Brown found out that almost everything he thought he knew about the Cold War was wrong. In his new book, Someone Is Out to Get Us, he concludes that the truth was far more frightening than any fiction and, fearing fear itself, we nearly scared ourselves into extinction by normalizing suicidal behavior as perfectly reasonable. In the end, the supposed superpower rivalry was really a mind-boggling waste of money and lives to wage an inherently lopsided contest with a preordained outcome. Thirty years after the Iron Curtain came tumbling down, Brown now reveals the many delusions, absurdities and best-kept secrets of the Cold War.