by John Lewis Gaddis
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Product Description
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: Stalin was at the height of his power; 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. Everywhere on the globe, colonialism left the West morally compromised. The story of the previous five decades, which saw severe economic depression, two world wars, a nearly successful attempt to wipe out the Jews, and the invention of weapons capable of wiping out everyone, was one of 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. How did this happen? How did fear become hope? In The Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis makes a major contribution to our understanding of this epochal story. Beginning with World War II and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union, he provides a thrilling account of the strategic dynamics that drove the age, rich with illuminating portraits of its major personalities and much fresh insight into its most crucial events. The first significant distillation of cold war scholarship for a general readership, The Cold War contains much new and often startling information drawn from newly opened Soviet, East European, and Chinese archives. Now, as America once again 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.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 OK, Fine, 2008-08-15
OK, Fine. I later find this product cheaper IN Denmark.
Everything else went fine and smoothly...
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Well researched but offers nothing new, 2008-08-05
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.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great condition, good buy for the money, 2008-07-16
I was impressed with the shipping time.
The book was in great condition.
All positive feedback at this point.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Fantastic -- great for generalists and cold war buffs, 2008-07-10
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.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A Scholarly Example of Cold War Biases, 2008-06-05
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).
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