The Cold War - Softcover

Gaddis, John Lewis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141025328 ISBN 13: 9780141025322

Publisher: Penguin, 2007

Synopsis

A brilliantly arresting historical work, John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction.

In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning...

Here is the truth behind every spy thriller you've read: why America and the Soviet Union became locked in a deadly stalemate; how close we came to nuclear catastrophe; what was really going on in the minds of leaders from Stalin to Mao Zedong, Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev, how secret agents plotted and East German holidaymakers helped the Berlin Wall fall. It is a story of crisis talks and subterfuge, tyrants and power struggles - and of ordinary people changing the course of history.

'Gripping'
  Len Deighton

'Superb ... brimful of racy incident'
  Independent on Sunday

'A lively and readable history'
  The Times

'Force 9 on the Richter scale'
  Spectator

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, and 'the dean of cold war historians' (The New York Times). He is the author of numerous books, including Security and the American Experience, the book recently pressed on his cabinet and senior security staff by President Bush.

About this title

Review:

'Compelling ... Gaddis has deliberately written the Cold War for
this generation'
-- Observer

'Force 9 on the Richter Scale' -- Spectator

'Gripping' -- Len Deighton

'Superb ... brimful of racy incident' -- Independent on Sunday

Synopsis:

In 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0141025328
• ISBN 13: 9780141025322
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352