Cold War : A New History

The dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in its drama, The Cold Warstands as a triumphant summation of the era that, more than any other, shaped our own.

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. His other books include We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History; Surprise, Security, and the American Experience; and a revised and expanded edition of Strategies of Containment. He was a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal.