The Cold War

The first truly commercial one-volume history of the Cold WarIn 1950, when Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il-Sung met in Moscow to discuss the future, they had reason to feel optimistic. International Communism seemed everywhere on the offensive- all of Eastern Europe was securely in the Soviet camp; America's monopoly on nuclear weapons was a thing of the past; and Mao's forces had assumed control over the world's most populous country. The story of the previous five decades was one of the worst fears confirmed, and there seemed as of 1950 little sign, at least to the West, that the next fifty years would be any less dark.In fact, of course, the century's end brought the widespread triumph of political and economic freedom over its ideological enemies. In The Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis makes a major contribution to our understanding of this epochal story. Beginning with the Second World War and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union, he provides a thrilling account of the strategic dynamics that drove the age. Now, as Britain once more finds itself in a global confrontation with an implacable ideological enemy, The Cold War tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand.

A fresh and admirably concise history . . . Gaddis's mastery of the material, his fluent style and eye for the telling anecdote make his new work a pleasure. ("The Economist")
Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject. ("The New York Times")
Outstanding ... The most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written. ("The Boston Globe")

John Lewis Gaddis is an internationally renowned historian of the Cold War and has been called 'the dean of Cold War historians' by The New York Times. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, is on the advisory board of the Cold War International History Project and has served as a consultant on the CNN television documentary Cold War. He is also the author of numerous books, including The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972), Strategies of Containment- A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982), We Now Know- Rethinking Cold War History (1997), The Landscape of History (2002) and Surprise, Security and the American Experience (2004). He is a 2005 winner of the US National Humanities Medal and lives in New Haven.

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