Book 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: 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.
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.
