Download or read book Reviewing the Cold War written by Odd Arne Westad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the cold war ended, it has become an international field of study, with new material from China, the former Soviet Union and Europe. This volume takes stock of where these new materials have taken us in our understanding of what the cold war was about and how we should study it.

Download or read book The Hawk and the Dove written by Nicholas Thompson and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant and revealing biography of the two most important Americans during the Cold War era—written by the grandson of one of them Only two Americans held positions of great influence throughout the Cold War; ironically, they were the chief advocates for the opposing strategies for winning—and surviving—that harrowing conflict. Both men came to power during World War II, reached their professional peaks during the Cold War's most frightening moments, and fought epic political battles that spanned decades. Yet despite their very different views, Paul Nitze and George Kennan dined together, attended the weddings of each other's children, and remained good friends all their lives. In this masterly double biography, Nicholas Thompson brings Nitze and Kennan to vivid life. Nitze—the hawk—was a consummate insider who believed that the best way to avoid a nuclear clash was to prepare to win one. More than any other American, he was responsible for the arms race. Kennan—the dove—was a diplomat turned academic whose famous "X article" persuasively argued that we should contain the Soviet Union while waiting for it to collapse from within. For forty years, he exercised more influence on foreign affairs than any other private citizen. As he weaves a fascinating narrative that follows these two rivals and friends from the beginning of the Cold War to its end, Thompson accomplishes something remarkable: he tells the story of our nation during the most dangerous half century in history.

Download or read book Re Viewing the Cold War written by Patrick M. Morgan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-02-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cooperative effort by a number of historians and political scientists, this essay collection focuses on the important connection between domestic affairs and foreign relations during the Cold War. The case studies treat phases of both the Soviet and American experiences and involve contributions by two Russian scholars, three Americans, a German, a Swede, and an Israeli. This collection is particularly timely and signficant because of the surprising way the Cold War ended, making clear that domestic developments can overthrow even the most potent foreign policies and undermine longstanding assumptions about the primacy of international factors. A provocative essay collection, this will be of interest to diplomatic historians and Soviet Affairs specialists, scholars, and students.

Download or read book The Cold War written by Odd Arne Westad and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of the Cold War and its impact around the world We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world. In The Cold War, Westad offers a new perspective on a century when great power rivalry and ideological battle transformed every corner of our globe. From Soweto to Hollywood, Hanoi, and Hamburg, young men and women felt they were fighting for the future of the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its deepest reverberations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where nearly every community had to choose sides. And these choices continue to define economies and regimes across the world. Today, many regions are plagued with environmental threats, social divides, and ethnic conflicts that stem from this era. Its ideologies influence China, Russia, and the United States; Iraq and Afghanistan have been destroyed by the faith in purely military solutions that emerged from the Cold War. Stunning in its breadth and revelatory in its perspective, this book expands our understanding of the Cold War both geographically and chronologically, and offers an engaging new history of how today's world was created.

Download or read book Reagan and Gorbachev written by Jack Matlock and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-11-08 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Matlock’s] account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service.”—The New York Times Book Review “Engrossing . . . authoritative . . . a detailed and reliable narrative that future historians will be able to draw on to illuminate one of the most dramatic periods in modern history.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In Reagan and Gorbachev, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and principal adviser to Ronald Reagan on Soviet and European affairs, gives an eyewitness account of how the Cold War ended. Working from his own papers, recent interviews with major figures, and unparalleled access to the best and latest sources, Matlock offers an insider’s perspective on a diplomatic campaign far more sophisticated than previously thought, waged by two leaders of surpassing vision. Matlock details how Reagan privately pursued improved U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations even while engaging in public saber rattling. When Gorbachev assumed leadership, however, Reagan and his advisers found a willing partner in peace. Matlock shows how both leaders took risks that yielded great rewards and offers unprecedented insight into the often cordial working relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev. Both epic and intimate, Reagan and Gorbachev will be the standard reference on the end of the Cold War, a work that is critical to our understanding of the present and the past.

Download or read book Understanding the Cold War written by Adam Bruno Ulam and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the Cold War is the story of a man and an epoch. Its telling moves between detailed personal history and an Olympian assessment of the origins, significant events, and outcome of the Cold War. Professor Ulam describes his hometown, family, and early education, as well as his departure, with his brother, for the U.S. just days before the Nazi invasion of Poland would have trapped them. Then follows reminiscences of his college and Harvard years, all rich with anecdote and insight, and his thoughts as an acknowledged expert on Soviet affairs. The volume offers basic antidotes to simplistic explanations. Whether discussing the Kirov assassination or the Moscow Trials of the so-called Trotskyist Bloc, or the nationalist basis of disputes between China and Russia during the Vietnam War period, Ulam avoids the sensational and the speculative in favor of the the empirical and the evidentiary. The core segments of the work review the Cold War from the belly of the Stalinist and later post-Stalinist communist system. And in a section entitled "The Beginning of the End," Ulam discusses the Gorbachev interregnum and the early years of the transition from communism to democracy. He well appreciates how the ease of the transition does not betoken a simple movement to the democratic camp. In contemplating the changing nature of the new political configuration, one could hardly have a better guide to clarity and authenticity than Adam Ulam. Reviewing Understanding the Cold War, Stephen Kotkin, director of Princeton's Russian Studies Program, observed "...And whereas some celebrated analysts, such as John Maynard Keynes, had dismissed Marxism as 'illogical and dull,' Ulam highlighted the doctrine's intricacy and comprehensiveness, which, he argued, explained its attraction not just to peasants, but also to intellectuals." "There is really only one legitimate measure of an autobiography, and that is its ability to bring the author to life for the reader, giving a sense of who the person was and what it must have been like to have known him or her. On that score, Adam Ulam's [Understand the Cold War] succeed on every level. To spend time with this book is to spend time with Adam himself. ... Adam Ulam's autobiography stands on its own, giving a clear picture of both the man and his career and displaying his analytical prowess and pe4rsonal charm in abundance." -Thomas P. M. Barnett, Project Muse Adam B. Ulam (1922-2000) taught at Harvard University from 1947 until his retirement in 1992. He was Gurney Professor of History and Political Science, and twice director of the Russian Research Center. He was the author of 19 books, including Prophets and Conspirators in pre-Revolutionary Russia (published by Transaction), Stalin: The Man and His Era, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, The Unfinished Revolution, Philosophical Foundations of English Socialism, and a political novel: The Kirov Affair. Paul Hollander is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusettes, Amherst, and a fellow of the David Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University. His books include Soviet and American Society, Political Pilgrims, The Survival of the Adversary Culture, and Anti-Americanism.

Download or read book Still Seeing Red written by John Kenneth White and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Still Seeing Red, John Kenneth White explores how the Cold War molded the internal politics of the United States. In a powerful narrative backed by a rich treasure trove of polling data, White takes the reader through the Cold War years, describing its effect in redrawing the electoral map as we came to know it after World War II. The primary beneficiaries of the altered landscape were reinvigorated Republicans who emerged after five successive defeats to tar the Democrats with the ?soft on communism? epithet. A new nationalist Republican party?whose Cold War prescription for winning the White House was copyrighted to Dwight Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan?attained primacy in presidential politics because of two contradictory impulses embedded in the American character: a fanatical preoccupation with communism and a robust liberalism. From 1952 to 1988 Republicans won the presidency seven times in ten tries. The rare Democratic victors?John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Jimmy Carter?attempted to rearm the Democratic party to fight the Cold War. Their collective failure says much about the politics of the period. Even so, the Republican dream of becoming a majority party became perverted as the Grand Old Party was recast into a top-down party routinely winning the presidency even as its electoral base remained relatively stagnant.In the post?Cold War era, Americans are coming to appreciate how the fifty-year struggle with the Soviet Union organized thinking in such diverse areas as civil rights, social welfare, education, and defense policy. At the same time, Americans are also more aware of how the Cold War shaped their lives?from the ?duck and cover? drills in the classrooms to the bomb shelters dug in the backyard when most Baby Boomers were growing up. Like millions of Baby Boomers, Bill Clinton can truthfully say, ?I am a child of the Cold War.?With the last gasp of the Soviet Union, Baby Boomers and others are learning that the politics of the Cold War are hard to shed. As the electoral maps are being redrawn once more in the Clinton years, landmarks left behind by the Cold War provide an important reference point. In the height of the Cold War, voters divided the world into ?us? noncommunists versus ?them? communists and reduced contests for the presidency into battles of which party would be tougher in dealing with the Evil Empire. But in a convoluted post?Cold War era, politics defies such simple characteristics and presidents find it harder to lead. Recalling how John F. Kennedy could so easily rally public opinion, an exasperated Bill Clinton once lamented, ?Gosh, I miss the Cold War.?

Download or read book Secrets of the Cold War written by Leland C. McCaslin and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the espionage files, an American soldier is nearly recruited in a downtown bar to be a spy and a First Sergeant is lured by sex to be an unknowing participant in spying. Behind-the-lines images are historic and intriguing. See photographs of a French officer and a Soviet officer relaxing in the East German woods in a temporary unofficial peace; 'James Bond' type cars with their light tricks and their ability to leave their Stasi shadows 'wheel spinning' in the snow will amaze readers. A Russian translator for the presidential hotline recounts a story about having to lock his doors in the Pentagon, separating himself and his sergeant from the Pentagon Generals when a message comes in from the Soviets. When he called the White House to relay the message to the President and stood by for a possible reply to the Soviet Chairman, he stopped working for the Generals and started working solely for the President.

Download or read book The Origins of the Cold War 1941 1949 written by Martin McCauley and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 2003 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cold War is one of the most important and widely studied areas of history. Martin McCauley s best-selling Seminar Study unravels the complex issues which gave rise to the Cold War. Revised, updated and expanded, this new edition incorporates the most recent scholarship, theories and newly-released information to provide students with an invaluable introduction to the subject.

Download or read book Origins of the Cold War 1941 49 written by Martin Mccauley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cold War is one of the most important and widely studied areas of history. Martin McCauley’s best-selling Seminar Study unravels the complex issues which gave rise to the Cold War and explains how it originated. This new edition is revised, updated and expanded with new material on areas such as the KGB and spying, and the contribution of intelligence to Stalin’s picture of the world. The new introduction looks at our perceptions of the Cold War, the various approaches that have been adopted for reviewing the Cold War and the difficulties of developing a theory of the Cold War. The book incorporates the most recent scholarship, theories and newly-released information to provide students with an invaluable introduction to the subject.

Download or read book Re examining the Cold War U S China Diplomacy 1954 1973 written by Robert S. Ross and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelve essays in this volume underscore the similarities between Chinese and American approaches to bilateral diplomacy and between their perceptions of each other’s policy-making motivations. Much of the literature on U.S.–China relations posits that each side was motivated either by ideologically informed interests or by ideological assumptions about its counterpart. But as these contributors emphasize, newly accessible archives suggest rather that both Beijing and Washington developed a responsive and tactically adaptable foreign policy. Each then adjusted this policy in response to changing international circumstances and changing assessments of its counterpart’s policies. Motivated less by ideology than by pragmatic national security concerns, each assumed that the other faced similar considerations.

Download or read book Exercise of Power written by Robert M. Gates and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 bestselling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world. Since the end of the Cold War, the global perception of the United States has progressively morphed from dominant international leader to disorganized entity. Robert Gates argues that this transformation is the result of the failure of political leaders to understand the complexity of American power, its expansiveness and its limitations. He makes clear that the successful exercise of power is not limited to the ability to coerce or demand submission, but must also encompass diplomacy, strategic communications, development assistance, intelligence, technology, and ideology. With forthright judgments of the performance of past presidents and their senior-most advisers, insightful ­firsthand knowledge, and compelling insider stories, Gates’s candid, sweeping examination of power in all its manifestations argues that U.S. national security in the future will require abiding by the lessons of the past, reimagining our approach, and revitalizing nonmilitary instruments of power essential to success and security.

Download or read book We Now Know written by John Lewis Gaddis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America's leading historians offers the first major history of the Cold War. Packed with new information drawn from previously unavailable sources, the book offers major reassessments of Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev, Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Truman.

Download or read book Return to Cold War written by Robert Legvold and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2014 crisis in Ukraine sent a tottering U.S.-Russian relationship over a cliff - a dangerous descent into deep mistrust, severed ties, and potential confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War period. In this incisive new analysis, leading expert on Soviet and Russian foreign policy, Robert Legvold, explores in detail this qualitatively new phase in a relationship that has alternated between hope and disappointment for much of the past two decades. Tracing the long and tortured path leading to this critical juncture, he contends that the recent deterioration of Russia-U.S. relations deserves to be understood as a return to cold war with great and lasting consequences. In drawing out the commonalities between the original cold war and the current confrontation, Return to Cold War brings a fresh perspective to what is happening between the two countries, its broader significance beyond the immediate issues of the day, and how political leaders in both countries might adjust their approaches in order, as the author urges, to make this new cold war "as short and shallow as possible."

Download or read book Rethinking the Cold War written by Allen Hunter and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A path-breaking collection of essays by cutting-edge authors that reassess the Cold War since the fall of communism.

Download or read book America s Cold War written by Campbell Craig and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A creative, carefully researched, and incisive analysis of U.S. strategy during the long struggle against the Soviet Union.” —Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy “Craig and Logevall remind us that American foreign policy is decided as much by domestic pressures as external threats. America’s Cold War is history at its provocative best.” —Mark Atwood Lawrence, author of The Vietnam War The Cold War dominated world affairs during the half century following World War II. America prevailed, but only after fifty years of grim international struggle, costly wars in Korea and Vietnam, trillions of dollars in military spending, and decades of nuclear showdowns. Was all of that necessary? In this new edition of their landmark history, Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall engage with recent scholarship on the late Cold War, including the Reagan and Bush administrations and the collapse of the Soviet regime, and expand their discussion of the nuclear revolution and origins of the Vietnam War. Yet they maintain their original argument: that America’s response to a very real Soviet threat gave rise to a military and political system in Washington that is addicted to insecurity and the endless pursuit of enemies to destroy. America’s Cold War speaks vividly to debates about forever wars and threat inflation at the center of American politics today.

Download or read book Comic Books and the Cold War 1946 1962 written by Chris York and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that comic books of the post-World War II era are poorly drawn and poorly written publications, notable only for the furor they raised. Contributors to this thoughtful collection, however, demonstrate that these comics constitute complex cultural documents that create a dialogue between mainstream values and alternative beliefs that question or complicate the grand narratives of the era. Close analysis of individual titles, including EC comics, Superman, romance comics, and other, more obscure works, reveals the ways Cold War culture--from atomic anxieties and the nuclear family to communist hysteria and social inequalities--manifests itself in the comic books of the era. By illuminating the complexities of mid-century graphic novels, this study demonstrates that postwar popular culture was far from monolithic in its representation of American values and beliefs.