The Cold War A History in Documents

The cold war lasted for more than fifty years and polarized the world. Rooted in political and ideological disagreements dating back to the Russian Revolution of 1917, the war emerged from disagreements that intensified in the wake of World War II. InThe Cold War: A History in Documents,Second Edition, Allan M. Winkler excerpts speeches by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to demonstrate the growing abyss between the two political systems. President Harry S. Truman's announcement of the existence of a Soviet atomic bomb and his speech to Congress launching the Truman Doctrine testify to the gravity of the situation. The cold war was not always "cold"--armed conflicts were narrowly avoided in the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs, and war erupted in Korea and Vietnam. The complex politics of the Vietnam War are represented by voices as divergent as Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh, President Lyndon B. Johnson, antiwar protestors, and a participant in the My Lai massacre. Cold War paranoia spread deeply through American society. Transcripts of the investigations of writer Ring Lardner, Jr., and government official Alger Hiss by the House Un-American Activities Committee, along with speeches by Senator Joe McCarthy, lay bar the political repression at home generated by the perceived communist threat. Excerpts from Arthur Miller's playThe Crucibleand from the movieHigh Nooncapture the mood of uncertainty and fear. A picture essay entitled "The Atom Unleashed" collects photographs and cartoons to trace one of the most controversial discoveries of the twentieth century. Agreements made in the SALT treaties show the cold war finally coming to an end; in 1992, President Bush declared, in his State of the Union address, "By the grace of God, America won the cold war." In this new edition, Chapter 6: An End at Last covers the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s more thoroughly, with documents such as criticism of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program and aNew York Timesreporter's experience of the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square. Thirteen new sidebars provide more material on China and Africa, including an excerpt from Mao Zedong's January 1957 speech on United States' lack of recognition for the People's Republic of China, Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah's 1958 speech on his hope that Africa would not be embroiled in the Cold War, and North Vietnamese leader Le Duan's 1975 victory speech, which condemned American imperialism. Five new images include a Herblock editorial cartoon about the Marshall Plan and a French Communist Party poster for peace in Vietnam. There is also a new note on sources and interpretation and updates to the lists of further reading and websites.

Allan M. Winkler is Distinguished Professor of History at Miami University in Ohio. A prize-winning teacher, he is author of ten books of his own, including "To Everything There Is a Season": Pete Seeger and the Power of Song (OUP, 2010), Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Making of Modern America (2005), and Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom (1993), and coauthor of the college textbook The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society (2011) and the high school textbook America: Pathways to the Present (2002).