The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War. This item is unavailable.The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War

How did it happen that the United States and the Soviet Union managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War confrontation without going to war with one another? Historian John Lewis Gaddis suggests an answer to this and other questions about post-war diplomacy. Gaddis uses declassified American and British documents to explore several key issues in Cold War history that remain unresolved: precisely what it was about the Soviet Union's behaviour after World War II that American leaders found so threatening; whether the United States really wanted a sphere of influence in post-war Europe; and what led the Truman administration first to endorse, but then immediately avoid American military involvement on the mainland of Asia.

`However circumscribed the tropics, Gaddis manages to infuse into each one a richness of association, of apposite generalization, which lifts them beyond the level of standart academic treatment. he is revealed above all as a highly rational and liberal-minded observer, a sharp dissector of human folly, who is yet quick to appreciate strengths where they are to be foundtimes higher education-august 1988

'Gaddis writes superbly well, no mean task when mixing narrative, analysis, personal reflection and advocacy ... Gaddis' powers of synthesis are, as ever, most impressive of all.' The Washington Post

'Gaddis raises some interesting and timely questions ... This provocative and well-argued work is recommended' Library Journal