Review Published in The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 49, March 2016 http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0007087416000182 Both The Open Mind and Shaky Foundations offer interesting insights into scholarship in Cold War North America, documenting a variety of political, institutional and social influences upon the social sciences. However, these books also provide examples of innovative approaches to the history of science, traversing institutional and disciplinary boundaries to follow ideas and arguments. Both accounts situate some of the methods and technologies produced by the social sciences in the Cold War period within the contexts in which they were produced, but also show how they were later co-opted, criticised and adapted.