The title to the New York Times book review of "The Cold War: A New History" is called "Look Back in Relief" written by Michael Beschloss.
That title indeed is what one could say at the end of this rather long odyssey called the Cold War. What Gaddis has done in this rather easy to read and gripping dialogue is to give a great general outline as to the cause and effects of the Cold War. Mr. Gaddis can utilize this work to write a definitive history which indeed would go into greater depth and detail.
To this time frame of World historical crisis would be an historical narrative on the order of the works of both the "World Crisis" and the "Second World War" written by Winston Churchill.
Gaddis gives the basic background and takes of the major political players such as Stalin, Mao Zedong, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II.
All the major conflicts and incidents such as the Berlin Wall, the Korean War, the Hungarian invasion etc. are all described here. Gaddis indeed gives mention and explanation to all these major events.
For the young students that Mr. Gaddis described in his Preface he does state this indeed may be like studying about the Carthaginians. However, I myself grew up and lived in this era throughout my childhood and into adulthood unto fatherhood. It was indeed a way of life.
How these political leaders dealt with each other and reacted to each other, determined the difference from living a normal life or facing utter annihilation.
What Gaddis has done here is excellent. It does need to be expounded and enhanced. At one point of his narrative I did have to laugh at his analysis. On page 33 he states "Meanwhile, Stalin had a blockade of Berlin. His reasons, even now, are not clear." Oh really, Gaddis is confused? Stalin has no clear reasons?? Stalin was no fool, he was pressing the Allies to determine their resolve. At this time he was testing the theory of the Communist proxy that the Allies would indeed separate and not be united in their efforts against the Soviet block. Indeed Stalin's ruse was foiled.
Outside of that particular diatribe, I concur with Gaddis' work. Good job 5 Stars.

This book is highly recommended for the student and the general reader interested in an overall survey of the Cold War as it was viewed and acted upon by the United States. A book on this topic from the French, British or Russian perspective would be a valuable adjunct to reading this volume. At times the book reads like an expanded outline but that is understandable considering the massive amount of information to be covered from the end of WW-2 to the fall of communism in 1991. For readers of American history on the watch for events and individuals worthy of additional study this book is a gold mine. The ample footnotes, extensive bibliography and index add to the usefulness of this book.

I want to recommend this book to any person interested in the cold war. In less than 300 pages the author gives a general overview of the events that took place from the end of the WW2 until the golpe that Eltsin made fail in the ex Urss on 1991. It summarizes many facts in a few pages and makes clear who were the main actors that contributed to feed and ultimately to end the cold war. There are also some comments from the author that help define the importance of the values and of the personalities and above all the reasons why cold war was born and finally ended. I HIGHLY recommend this book

OK, Fine. I later find this product cheaper IN Denmark.

Everything else went fine and smoothly...

Gaddis offers a concise, readable, and well-documented history of the Cold War. What he does not offer us is a "new" history, as the title promises. This book helped fill in some blanks about the most dangerous period of our history, but I didn't set the book down thinking I had a strongly different view on the event then I could have got from other sources.

I liked how the book allowed you to get in the heads of the various U.S. presidents, and see how they thought about the war--sometimes counterintuitively. However, it seemed like there were things left out. Cambodia is mentioned only in passing on the last page, even though communism hit that country harder than any other, arguably.

The book does seem titled to the idea that the U.S. was the morally superior of the two sides, though Gaddis does not shy away from the darker moments of U.S. geopolitics in the Cold War.

Oddly enough, I walked away hoping that there would be more, not less, retrospective analysis. Just how close was the Soviet Union to collapsing before Reagan took office? Just what might have happened if the United States had not "faught" the Cold War and let the Soviet Union expand and collapse on its own? Normally, scholars tend to get too far out on hypotheticals, but here I find myself wishing he would have spent a little more time on them.

I was impressed with the shipping time.
The book was in great condition.
All positive feedback at this point.

Very tighly written book that still manages to produce some fascinating annecdotes (Kruschev and Mao in the pool together) to enliven the narrative. Both myself (a history buff) and my wife (decidedly not a history buff) found it a comprehensive and yet very readiable survey of the Cold War. Its both informative and entertaining. I strongly recommend it.

John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War: A New History (2005) is an example of counter post-revisionism. The subtitle to Gaddis's work is misleading; stating his work is a new history carries an implication that there are new sources that change the interpretation of the Cold War. Gaddis restates traditionalist arguments in the wake of post-revisionism. Gaddis clearly reveals his bias in the preface, "The world, I am quite sure, is a better place for that conflict having been fought in the way that it was and won by the side that won it." Central to Gaddis's argument is the perception Stalin wanted to dominate Europe. The domination of Europe would appease Stalin's need for self-security, which Gaddis argues was more important to Stalin than Marxism-Leninism. He argues Stalin's megalomania and determination to secure his own position placed the United States on the defensive, and created "Machiavellians" of U.S. political leaders, which undermined the democratic traditions and morality leading to operations such as the Bay of Pigs and Watergate. Gaddis justifies the actions of the U.S. by juxtaposing them with the overtly aggressive nature of the Soviet Union. The Cold War is a successor to traditionalists, and a counter to revisionists and post-revisionists who are apt to view the Cold War without the lens of early U.S. foreign policy, and more inclined to support their work with new archival material in Russian and English. Gaddis regurgitates Cold War biases that have been disproved by new sources in the former Soviet Union. Tony Judt best sums up Gaddis's treatment of the Cold War: "Gaddis's version is perfectly adapted for contemporary America: an anxious country curiously detached from its own past as well as from the rest of the world and hungry for 'a fireside fairytale with a happy ending'" (Reappraisals, 381).

I frankly find myself scratching my head reading the positive reviews after having read this book. I unfortunately agree more with Mr. Desmond's negative assessment. I can't be quite as harsh as him though and do give the book two stars.

One star is for attempting to write a book of such ambitious design, a one stop overview of the entire cold war. The second is for the fact that the author is at least a very good writer (fluid prose, vivid descriptions, etc.), but for reasons I'll explain shortly this does not mean I think he's a good historian.

There are many, many flaws in this book. First, as a history of the entire Cold War, it is 256 pages of actual text or so. To say depth is lost and superficiality is necessary to try to cover so large an event over such a long period of time in so short an amount of space would be a drastic understatement. It fails however to make up for this lack of depth by pulling out new or innovative insights by virtue of its tremendous breadth. The author clearly knows a lot of facts of the cold war, and repeats some of them, but his insights are just terrible, if not completely sophmoric. Many of his insights are along the lines of declaring that Moscow and Washington "really did think alike" because both believed thermonuclear weapons could destroy civilization if used. You could also conclude that Catholic priests and atheists think alike because both believe the sky is blue. This completely glosses over the extreme and salient differences in ideologies and paradigms with which the west and the communists saw and interpreted the world. He seems to conclude that capitalism won simply because it was hopeful (as opposed to communism's autocratic and fearful nature) and because it just so happened to be better at allocating resources, a further symptom of what seems to be a gross misunderstanding of what both systems were truly about and their fundamentally irreconcible moral / philosophical foundations. (A misunderstanding that astonishingly leads him to declare China a capitalist country after Deng Xiaoping comes to power, although this sloppy and unrealistic assessment of China is unfortunately rampant today and continues to obfuscate the true natures of capitalism and communism). He also claims that human nature actually physically changed as evidenced by the fact that mankind did not use nuclear weapons, and that it changed as a result of leaders like Harry Truman. These assertions are not only strikingly rare for a book of this nature, but seem alarmingly obtuse when offered.

The book also suffers from being very poorly organized. It is not chronological, which is fine, but neither is it theme driven, divided instead into pseudo-thematic chapters. However, with titles like "Lifeboats and Deathboats," the themes of these chapters are not only vague, but hard to actually see shining through in the content of the chapter or in any analysis of said content. As a result it's 250+ pages of randomly jumping about datapoints from the cold war that progresses chronologically only on average. The near random agglomeration of facts in each chapter seems connected to the title only through clumsily crafted analogies to pop culture references. Often these analogies came off as both forced fit and unconvincing. For example the Lifeboats and Deathboats chapter ties into a reference to the once popular book Life of Pi, but not really in any meaningful way. One gets the sense of the author just liking the book and being proud of himself for plugging it in his own, or thinking that proving to the world he read it makes him come off as smart or cultured.

Another major flaw with the book is that you are better off reading it with overview knowledge about the cold war already, and I would not recommend it to someone who lacks this knowledge - ostensibly the book's target audience. Completely lacking in organization, major themes of the Cold War, particularly Detente, usually just appear in mid stream of other thoughts as references. They are barely explained, let alone even introduced. And due to the short nature of the book are given equally short shrift, undeserving of their importance to the world we now live in.

This book is not even light history, it's history lite. No calories, no steak, not even the sizzle. If Mr. Gaddis is the pre-eminent American historian of the Cold War I weep for the state of American historians.

This book is quick and easy to read, and has some interesting information, but I can't really recommend it.

There is a crying need for new histories of the Cold War based on revelations, especially from Soviet sources, but also from declassified American material released since the end of the period. This is not it. Covering the 40+ years in less than 300 pages implies some superficiality, but Gaddis' approach makes the effort essentially worthless. He also has to take the obligatory slap at McCarthy without bothering to admit that "we now know" (the title of another Gaddis work) that declassified material has largely shown that he told the truth and his detractors consistently lied. He then digresses into a ludricrous analysis of nuclear strategy that coincides with no known theory. He has dumbed the entire process down to a horrible degree and the entire enterprise is awash in political correctness.

John Lewis Gaddis has certainly shown his expertise on the history of the Cold War in this accessible read. This is a relatively brief book that nonetheless covers a lot of territory in providing the background behind the developments that occurred after World War II, which created the standoff between the 2 major superpowers (the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.) in that war's aftermath. The competing ideologies, the world leaders and the parts they played, and the effects of their decisions and others are all discussed in this book, an ideal book for those who are just getting acquainted with this subject.

The author traces each successive U.S. president, from Truman to Bush Sr., and how they confronted their Russian counterparts. Likewise, the leaders of the U.S.S.R., from Stalin to Gorbachev, and their legacies are given a substantial amount of attention. Gaddis also looks at other nations that were impacted or became involved, such as China under Mao Zedong, and how they played roles in the course of this uncertain time. The author makes some revealing points when he examines, for example, how other nations played off this conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to advance their own interests and to demonstrate their own importance in the game of chess that seemed to characterize the Cold War.

Without going into all the actions taken by the nations involved, e.g. the policy of containment or the development of detente which was defined as a way of soothing tensions through talks, diplomacy, compromise, etc., I found it comforting when Gaddis stated in the end that when it was all said and done, it was the ordinary man that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The madness behind the arms race, the influence of the MAD theory, the general mood of fear and distrust that all marked this era made it an extremely regrettable period.

Gaddis seems to be a very fair-minded historian who can look at both sides of an issue. He's also good at pointing out strengths and flaws, contradictions and inconsistencies of leaders, governments and ideologies, both here and abroad. Perhaps some topics were a bit too abbreviated or not fleshed out fully enough, but considering this is a relatively brief book, that's not too surprising. I would highly recommend this very readable book as a solid introduction to understanding the nature of the Cold War.

This is the definitive assessment of the Cold War written by the dean of America's Cold War historians. On such a subject, it is far more difficult to write a brief rather than a 1000+ page chronicle. Professor Gaddis has previously written exhaustively on diverse phases and aspects of the Cold War. Here he succinctly distills what he has learned within an analytical context that well serves both Cold War experts as well as those with but a casual knowledge.

What I find especially valuable is Gaddis's ability to describe and analyze the rationale behind the often failed policies of the protagonists. He highlights the ignorance, misunderstandings, and complexities on both sides. Just as Ulbricht and the East Germans held the Soviets 'captive' with their parochial needs, so too did the Koreans and others confound American policymakers. Vietnam is an example where both the Soviets and the Americans were hoisted on their own petards.

De Gaulle was a 'cross of Lorraine' borne by the West, while Mao, especially after Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech, continually shafted the less ideological Soviets.

Tony Judt was highly critical of Gaddis's casual treatment of the Third World, which Judt considered critical to the Cold War struggle in the 1960s-1970s. As a career diplomat who served in various Third World countries during this period, I heartily support Gaddis's view that the Third World sorties were peripheral to the key elements of the Cold War contest. Indeed, both the Soviets and the Americans behaved badly in these Third World encounters. Top Soviets reflected that they were held 'hostage' by some peripheral situations as Angola and Ethiopia.

Gaddis focuses on the basic fallacies of the communist ideology: economically, Marxist (or central planning) economics were doomed to fail, and denying people liberty and a decent standard of living was ultimately a losing hand.

Over the coming years, scholars will, with further archival materials, will be able to dot some of Gaddis's historical "i"s and cross some of his "t"s. I doubt that all but the most determined revisionists will significantly alter the basic thrust of Gaddis's seminal assessment.

This is not your traditional, linear account of events, as we have come to know most other history books. This is a variety of asynchronos snapshots of key figures during the cold war, and the people and events surrouding them.

This format is interesting, but not quite what I expected. There are a number of omitted events, details, background events that add color to the current story. Each chapter is a story unto itself, so do not feel compelled to read this book in long sittings - here and there will get you through. Good commuting reading.

I liked this book, but I felt that Gaddis (or his editors) held back in the interest of selling more books. This is dissappointing. It is never fun seeing a great mind pander to the lowest common denominator in order to sell more books.

Who wrote this book; Gaddis, or the marketing department?

This is not your traditional, linear account of events, as we have come to know most other history books. This is a variety of asynchronos snapshots of key figures during the cold war, and the people and events surrouding them.

This format is interesting, but not quite what I expected. There are a number of omitted events, details, background events that add color to the current story. Each chapter is a story unto itself, so do not feel compelled to read this book in long sittings - here and there will get you through. Good commuting reading.

I liked this book, but I felt that Gaddis (or his editors) held back in the interest of selling more books. This is dissappointing. It is never fun seeing a great mind pander to the lowest common denominator in order to sell more books.

Who wrote this book; Gaddis, or the marketing department?

John Lewis Gaddis' "The Cold War: A New History" is an excellent, easily readable, and concise history of the cold war. Gaddis, a professor at Yale and expert on the Cold War, displays his true grasp of this period in history in this work.

The Cold War began at the close of World War II as the wartime alliance between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. quickly transformed into a competition for security and influence in Europe and soon the rest of the world. Gaddis explains the early years of this struggle as the U.S. and U.S.S.R. entered the nuclear age, struggled to find the boundaries of their rivalry during the Korean War, erection of the Berlin Wall, Cuban Missile Crisis, and other incidents - all under the threat of an escalation into an unwinnable nuclear war. Then came the détente of the 1970s when the Cold War entered a steady state and apparent permanence, until the failure of communist societies coupled with the "great actors" of the 1980s - Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II - brought about the unexpected end to the Cold War.

Gaddis tells this story thematically, focusing on the big picture without getting bogged down into narrative details or spending much time on any once incident. Even the Vietnam War and Afghanistan only merit a couple of pages. This approach is fantastic in keeping the story well under 300 pages, but it certainly leaves the reader wanting to read more about so many of these incidents.

Although the book drags somewhat in the middle Gaddis' telling of the climactic 1980s is outstanding. Focusing on the important personalities of Reagan, Thatcher, the Pope, Lech Walesa, and Gorbachev, Gaddis leans much more toward the "great man" theory of history and credits these people with ending the Cold War when most other leaders in the world had accepted the status quo of a continued Cold War - in stark contrast to Stephen Kotkin, who in "Armageddon Averted" blames the Soviet collapse almost entirely on internal problems and dismisses any impact by the Western visionaries and their pressure on the U.S.S.R. However, in addition to crediting the Western visionaries, Gaddis also credits the people of Eastern Europe who seized the opportunities they had, especially in 1989, to push the Eastern Bloc past the point of criticality.

As these events fade into history, Gaddis' work does an excellent job placing the Cold War in historical context. This is especially important for those of us who were children of the Cold War, because we need to remember how much the world has changed in our lifetimes. Gaddis has written an excellent book that anyone interested in the history of the 20th century should read.

The Cold War: A New History

The subtitle of this book is a bit misleading. More appropriate titles would include The Cold War: Blame America Last and The Cold War: America Knows Best. Gaddis claims that this book is a `new history' because he uses historical evidence from archives that were previously closed to the public. One can only wonder what powers would allow this male cheerleader of the U.S. access to these. The ideological tone of this book is nothing new as it is similar to various news media interpretations of cold war politics. The cast is the same, Truman, Ike, Kennedy, Mao, Stalin, Khrushchev, etc. The dichotomies are set up early on and stay the same throughout- west/east, capitalist/communist, good/evil, free/authoritarian, rational/non-rational, pragmatic/ideological, and productive/stagnant among others. Without a doubt, some of these labels serve as useful analytical tools. Unfortunately, coming from an `expert of legitimation' in a `culture of systematic denial', these dichotomies sound like the captain of the football team making fun of the lower-class kid who has trouble with life in general. Does might make right?

More than anything else, this book is an expression of the white, middle-class, male status quo. Perhaps if Gaddis were to have experienced poverty and/or war, he may have been more sympathetic to those who have. It is almost hard to believe that a widely awarded professor from Yale would write a children's book. Future historians will most likely laugh at this book. Any country or world leader who chooses to side with the United States is assigned with the more positive pairing of the dichotomy. De Gaul, Zedong, Stalin, Kruschev, any world leader who does not confirm with the mandates of United States foreign policy is assigned with pejorative terms to their psychological make-up. They are unstable, egoistic and, in short, the exact opposite of United States presidents and their advisors who are selfless 'philosopher kings' who are spreading freedom and democracy to the world in the form of capitalism.

This book is a big joke. You would have to be ridiculously gullible or brainwashed by nationalist ideology to take this book as containing objective facts.

Schabowski? More on him later. Author Gaddis has written an outstanding book for the average reader. He teaches a course on this, and one day a student of his suggested he write a summary of the Cold War for the general reader. After all a person has to be over 60 to have lived through most of it. This book is the result, and Gaddis makes every word count.

I've been amused by reviews that says the book is too long, or too short, or it is opinionated. It's just the right length, going into enough detail to tie together all the elements of a 45 year period in which the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was the operating policy of the USSR and the United States. It is opinionated, no doubt, but it is fascinating to read the author's take on the whys and wherefores of everything that happened.

Initially the goal was détente, two major powers beefing themselves up to insure that war between them would be an absurd death sentence. All the time, however, the superpowers were struggling somehow to lessen the dangers of this sort of coexistence. Sadly their efforts were frequently set back by governmental acts of folly. We were making some progress when we decided to invade Vietnam. The Russians were infuriated. Not that they cared a whit about Vietnam. It was just that our engagement in this war set back the negotiating process. Another setback was the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

Then some key people came on the scene. John Paul II aroused millions when he visited Poland; Lech Walesa created a groundswell of hope among the Poles. Thatcher came on the scene and declared socialism a failure in Britain, and then Reagan decided that détente wasn't something we could live with for the rest of human life on the planet. Gaddis feels that certain people arriving at the right time helped end the Cold War. Russia's total control of its people was based on promises of a better way of life, and keeping them in fear of outside forces like the U.S. These means of control began to fail.

Oh yes, then there is Schabowski, a minion of the East German government who, in late 1989, was told to hold a press conference reading a statement that the government was going to relax somewhat the restrictions on citizens leaving the country. Schabowski hadn't read the document carefully, got on stage, fumbled with his papers, and told the world that from now on East Germans could leave the country whenever they wanted to. And that's when the wall came tumbling down.

I did live through this entire period, and was glad to read this excellent memory refresher. I learned new things, and appreciated Mr. Gaddis's take on the governments and people involved in this long deadly battle to achieve a greater peace in the world. I'm not sure I agreed with everything he said, but that's fine. I read books to learn things and to get other people's perspective on what's happened in the history of this troubled world. In my opinion no one can write a history of this subject and give just the "facts."

This is quite simply an excellent concise introduction to the Cold War, for the general reader. It rattles along at a cracking pace and is extremely informative on the complexities, contradictions and ironies of the most paranoid and dangerous period in world history.

The chapter on Truman, Eisenhower and Clausewitz is worth buying the book for alone. It would make interesting reading for some of our anti-nuclear politicians and CND types. As would the chapter on the much ridiculed Ronald Reagan and his morally clear leadership in the 1980's.

I disagree with the charge that it is too pro-American. America has many faults and has made many mistakes, but it has defended the free-world over the last hundred years. There is simply no moral equivalence to be played between totalitarianism and liberal democracy.

This book shows that freedom, liberty and democracy are not just abstract theories. They are not just rhetoric. (Even with the failures in Vietnam and Iraq) They have practical, life and death, consequences in the real world.

That is why Henry 'Scoop' Jackson and Ronald Reagan were an inspiration to people in the Communist bloc and why the Helsinki Accords were so important to dissidents like Sakharov and Sharansky. We may trash the US in Western Europe because we're trendy anti-imperialist liberals; but look at the way Americans are treated like heroes in former Warsaw-pact countries. They lived under communism, we didn't.

Whether readers agree with American policy today or not, this book should make people feel relieved that the free-world, led by America, defeated communism during the Cold War. Human rights, freedom, capitalism - backed with military and technological superiority - came through in the end and we're all the better for it.

I fear however that more young people today are more inclined to read the non-historical, non-scholarly drivel of Noam Chomsky, than they are the brilliant scholarship of professional historians like Mr Gaddis.

John Lewis Gaddis has devoted his entire career to studying the Cold War and this book represents an impressive distillation of a career. In clear, well-written, and accessible prose, he covers 44 years of international history. This broad scope means that certain events must receive only brief mention, but he keeps his main focus on the U.S.-Soviet diplomatic confrontation that was at the heart of what we commonly call the Cold War.

Unlike many historians, Gaddis has throughout his career shown a willingness to revise himself. In this book, we see Gaddis advancing arguments that he first made in the early 1970s with new ones in addition to slightly revised views. He puts ideas rather than power at the center of this confrontation. He also puts most of the blame on the highly ideological Soviet Union, an argument that most Russians would have little problem accepting today. He argues that détente had to die for the Cold War to end. A number of people were important in challenge the authority of Communist parties, including Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Vaclav Havel. Gaddis gives President Ronald Reagan high marks for his handling of U.S. foreign policy. Reagan was not one for the details, but he understood his job was not to pay attention to how many rivets there were on the B-1 bomber, but rather to provide direction at the strategic level. Reagan, in other words, was good at understanding the big ideas and let others deal with the details. Mikhail Gorbachev gets sympathetic treatment for eventually letting the ghost go without restoring to violence.

This book is provocative, easy to read, and informative. It is a good place for beginners to begin and for experts to look for new ideas.

I found this book to be an extremely well organized survey of the Cold War. Professor Gaddis eloquently explains the sources of the conflict. He goes on to describe the escalation; and then points out how, somewhere in the middle, many of its actors came to view the conflict as permanent, and even desirable. He explains how it took men and women of vision to see the landscape of the future without the conflict as a permanent fixture, and then relentlessly pursue that vision.

The inclusion of the Soviet perspective from recently available sources makes this book especially interesting. The Soviets were pursuing global communism, which proved to be an unworkable solution to the ills of unbridled capitalism. But, we may never have had such crystal clear historical evidence of its unworkability if the Soviets hadn't undertaken their experiment.

The year Ronald Reagan died my mom commented to me, "What is all the fuss about Reagan? What did he ever do?" After I wiped the blood from my eyes, I asked her, "You don't speak Russian do you? If nothing else, you can thank him and men like him for that." People tend to forget what a formidable foe the USSR was and how close they came to winning the Cold War. Todays youth have even made the old Russian flag a fashion statement, wearing it on tee-shirts hoping to gain cool points from their hip socialist brainwashed friends. But the fact of the matter is that the Russian Empire was a threat. John Gaddis does an excellent job reminding us of this fact. Although the book is not an in depth study of the cold war, it is useful as a reminder to subsequent generations that the Communist threat was real, in American and throughout the rest of the world.

Gaddis has done an excellent job of telling an extremely complicated history in a tight and well-written volume. The importance of his story is contrasted by his reminding the reader that his college students today have almost no living memory of the Cold War or just how serious a historical epic it was between two great powers.

As the world has changed dramatically over the past 16 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, this book will be an excellent resource to remember just what a huge struggle the Western bloc vs. the Soviet Union and its satellites was. This is not an ideaological book from the Yale professor Gaddis, but he gives credit to the end of the Cold War to three individuals and a people group: Ronald Reagan, Margeret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and the people of eastern Europe who contiually stood up to the Soviet and local communist leaders.

A weak point of this book, which admittedly does not have time to explore the vast and complicated expressions of every part of the Cold War is Gaddis explanation for why the anti-war movements of the 1960's and 70's in the West erupted with as much fury as they did, and subsided almost as quickly. His explanation, that it was largely caused by baby boom young adults, coming of age, with lots of time on their hands seems like a short answer. Comparing and contrasting the reaction of the West to the Korean War vs. Vietnam might have made a better use of the text.

Gaddis presentation of how the Cold War started at the end of World War II is another excellent section, especially how the West, making practical concessions to the Soviets that they could never hope to bargain for at the end of the war, quickly turned European opinion against the Soviets by forcing the Soviets into the position of being the ones who built wall, established border police and shut themselves off because they had to keep people in.

The explanation of proxy conflicts, especially in the Middle East, is another highlight of the work. Seeing the Israeli and Palestinian conflict as rump to the Cold War, and the Soviets inability to deal with their Egyptian allies in Nasser further showed the weakness of the Soviet state.

While ultimatley Gaddis presents the end of the Cold War as being led by the four main actors mentioned earlier, his treatment of Gorbachev as a man who managed the end of the failure of the Soviet Empire and the inability of the Soviets to have a sustainable economic future - the very reason for its existence is told with great clarity.

Gaddis warns throughout the book that choosing an ends justifying the means approach got the West into more dificulty than anything else. The attempt by the West, especially between John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, to manage a stable world delayed the inevitable end of the Cold War and more than likely created greater human misery of the likes the world has rarely scene. Ronald Reagan, and Thatcher and John Paul, were in a sense revolutionaries, for they sought to win the Cold War by calling for total peace and not half measures of agreements and stability.

This is ideal if you're not looking for an 14,000 page account of the Cold War...you get a little background on everything, from nuclear tests to Cuba to the fall of the USSR. What you don't get is much detail, which, I suppose, is the intent of a concise history; a little more detail would have been nice, though. It's a 260 page book, a few more facts or stories here and there probably wouldn't have pushed this into "only for historians" territory, it's hard to complain about the brevity of a book whose aim is brevity. 'The Company' by Robert Littel goes well with this, as it fleshes out many of the major events here in a far less dry manner than most Cold War history books. Anybody looking for an overview of one of the largest, longest, most epic events in modern history should pick this up.

One of the great debates in American foreign policy is how do you deal with repressive regimes. There are several schools of thought on how to proceed. The first is isolation (this has been the U.S. policy towards Iran and N. Korea). The second is confrontation (Iraq is the obvious example) and the third is communication (this would be the tactic used by Nixon in China and the policy of détente with the Soviet Union). Each policy has its advocates and detractors and each its plusses and minuses. Embracing China has worked out fairly well for its citizenry although there is much room for improvement. On the other hand supporting the Saudi monarchy has caused some serious headaches for the U.S. and Saudi citizens. Isolation and sanctions have a very poor track record and generally makes repressed citizenry even worse off. Confrontation can have unpredictable results that often exasperate the situation. Military confrontation can lead to considerable misery and verbal confrontation generally fails because one of the maxims of maintaining a dictatorship is demonstrating strength. The Bush administrations threats towards Iran and North Korea have fallen flat.

The ethos of `do no harm' fails when deciding how to deal with stable but brutal dictatorships or failing regimes. I was watching Hotel Rwanda with my girlfriend when she asked why the United Nations hadn't done more to protect the Tutsis from genocide. But what could the U.N. do? Slaughter the Hutus? The Tutsis had blood on their own hands. In the case of Bosnia the U.N. and U.S. bombed the hell out of the Serbians but again the Albanians were no angels and had in fact sided with the Axis during WWII. While trying to arrest Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid 18 American soldiers died but so did an estimated 1,000 and 1,500 Somali militiamen with an upwards of 4,000 injured Somali. So when does a humanitarian mission become a slaughter?

In the case of the Soviet Union the people were clearly suffering under a crushingly repressive dictatorship. Despite its claim to being a system of the working man, Communism was an intellectual farce and an economic disaster. It was also a system bent on spreading its message and extending its influence. So the debate in the West was between confrontation and isolation. In the end a compromise of sorts was formed ending in confrontation through proxies. The author gave several examples of countries playing the two superpowers off one another. By not explicitly siding with one or the other smaller countries could manipulate for their own benefit or "wag the dog".

`The Cold War' by John Lewis Gaddis is rather brief for a subject spanning over 40 years of history. The author spends a considerable amount of time discussing the changing nature of war after the invention of the atomic bomb. We all owe a debt of gratitude to leaders on both sides of the iron curtain for showing the wisdom and restraint to not use these horrifying weapons. `The Cold War' chronicles the history of the Soviet Union from Stalin to Yeltzin. In the Soviet Union there was no position high enough that one could be free from danger of removal. There will always be a debate on whether containment was the best solution or whether it was Reagan's confrontation that was the final nail in the coffin. The author clearly favors the style Reagan and Thatcher and pretty much omits the sections on U.S. meddling in South America and the Middle East in the name of containment. Reagan's refusal to use the nonworking SDI as a bargaining chip seems silly in retrospect but it was on his watch that the Soviet Union collapsed and since the world wasn't irradiated I figure he must have done SOMETHING right.

It is not possible for any historian to write a definitive history of the cold war. We are still involved in it to some degree. John Lewis Gaddis provides one of the first attempts to create an overview of the subject. In many ways it is a good straight forward introduction to the topic and it provides fresh prespective on it.

Gaddis does not resolve some key questions: Did the neo- conservative policies of Reagan cause the disintegration of the soviet union or was the destruction an inevitable collapse of a moribund society. This is a vital historical and political question as it was the supposed success of the war in Afghanistan became one the prime drivers of the neo-conservative move to invade Iraq.

Gaddis gives some good analysis, but history is more than critical observation, it inevitably forms a commentary on today's politics.

Gaddis is a good historian, but I would have liked some more commentary on the continuing impact of the cold war.

Simply spectacular. I only wish the book were twice as large and twice as detailed. There is so much to cover, for example, that the Cuban Missile Crisis receives only one page.

Gaddis has written much on the cold war, and this was, for all intents and purposes, his attempt to "dumb it down" to a more accessible survey. In this he has succeeded, and from here I will turn to his other, more detailed writing on the period.

Gaddis is a noted scholar who has written an extraorinarily concise and compelling history of the Cold War. His writing is brilliant. The prologue about Orwell and Reagan provides just the right touch, and his ability to weave it into his ultimate thesis is remarkable.

Gaddis is able to answer some old questions by digging through the recently available Soviet sources. I would have liked to have seen more detail in this regard. Also missing is any discussion of the revisionists' critique of the Cold War and why Gaddis does or does not (presumably the latter) agree with the Williams/Kolko/Gardner/LaFeber school of thought. I don't think those criticisms can be breezily dismissed, and any history of the Cold War should grapple with them.

It's difficult to stomach anything positive written about Reagan, though Gaddis' portrayal of Reagan as providing a useful rejection of Detente policy is quite compelling and persuasive.

Nobody writes history this short anymore, and the beauty and conciseness of the writing is to be admired.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and thought it was very well written. Too many books covering the Cold War are either too simplistic or too thesis-driven and therefore narrowly focused. This book, more than any other I've read of the Cold War, allows the reader to grasp the key events, people, and most importantly, concepts that underlay this period in 20th century history. The Cold War was an epic 40 year political conflict that is "accessibly distilled" by Gaddis in this book.

I would reccomend this book to anybody seeking to understand what the Cold War was beyond the simplistic narrations in history books, any others looking to brush up on their history and anybody looking for additional perspective in the Cold War.

I received the book and it appeared to be in good order. Not until I was far into the book did I realize it was missing over 30 pages. I didn't realize one needed to count the pages in a book to make sure they were all there.

I found this book to be a monumental disappointment. I was expecting to read a balanced and impartial account of the history of the Cold War. What I encountered instead is an almost pamphletarian capitalist manifesto. The book does a good job in exposing the many evils of Marxism-Leninism but it completely glosses over the equally evil aspects of the capitalist system, which have only worsened in the decade and a half since the end of the Cold War. An interplanetary visitor reading this book would be led to believe that all humans living in capitalist societies enjoy freedom, justice, equal opportunities and unlimited possibilities of material and intellectual growth. Nothing could be further form the truth. I wonder if the author has ever had a chance to travel to, for example, Latin America (or even to areas of the U.S. less prosperous than the ones with which he may be more familiar), and experience first hand the many social and economic injustices bred by the capitalist system. As an aside, I also note with amusement that he correctly and consistently points out the fallacy in the central tenet of Marxism-Leninism that its triumph was historically preordained, yet he uses this same argument to justify the ascendancy of capitalism! I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways.

I was not taught Cold War history in school because it had not happened yet and I did not learn much about it when it happened because I busy with other things. Now that I have read John Lewis Gaddis' Cold War, I am amazed at how many events were going on all over the world that had a direct bearing on me and the lives of my generation. When I was in the Army, I thought being sent to Germany was lucky brake. Little did I realize just how close I came to being part of the first wave in a war with Russia over the occupation of Germany. There was nothing between us but a mad man and a wire fence.

The Cold War is about a piece of important history that is expertly examined from all sides. The author steps back to create the big picture then present's a scholarly analysis of the Cold War period. It fits well with Tony Judt's Post War: A History of Europe Since 1945, which is another great book about historical events that included the Cold War.

Cold War is a 5-star book to read and remember.

This is a well written book that unfortunately is not the book I hoped it would be. If, like me, you are looking for a book that retells the history and events of the cold war then you will be disappointed. If you already possess a knowledge or vivid memory of those events and are looking for an opinion on the thoughts of individuals and the ideology that led to those events then you will be delighted. For example, I would expect a book on the Cold War to spend 10+ pages on the Berlin airlift. There was one sentence that mentioned it occurred. Checkpoint Charlie and the stories associated with it - not mentioned. Gary Powers and the U2 plane - one paragraph. Etc. Etc. Again, this is a well written book and the author didn't fail to deliver so much as I failed to buy the right book. I offer this review so that others looking for the same book I was aren't disappointed.