Following world war ii and the european continent was devastated. The war left the soviet bloc and the united states as an uncontested superpower.It was the beginning of over 45 years of cold war and also a political alliance of west-based democracies versus the soviet bloc of communists that led to conflict that saw allies from both side fighting each other, despite the fact that both militaries of the us and soviet union did not engage each other. Berlin was a ho...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEThe first full account of how the Cold War arms race finally came to a close, this riveting narrative history sheds new light on the people who struggled to end this era of massive overkill, and examines the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today.Drawing on memoirs, interviews in both Russia and the US, and classified documents from deep inside the Kremlin, David E. Hoffman examines the...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.From the end of World War Two to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia and America eyed each other with suspicion and hostility as the world lived in the shadow of the Cold War. As post-war Europe was rebuilt, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin struggled to maintain peace among the former Eastern and Western Allies. Two ideologies, two political systems, two cultures, two superpowers became entrenched in a fight for domi...

“Outstanding . . . The most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written.” —The Boston Globe“Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject.” —The New York TimesThe “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 r...

The landmark story of Bush-Gorbachev diplomacy: "No one has ever given as complete and compelling an account of the higher reaches of foreign policy" ( Time).December 1989. The Berlin Wall had fallen. Millions across the Eastern Bloc were enjoying new freedoms. And the USSR was falling apart. But the peaceful end of the Cold War was far from assured, requiring the leaders of rival superpowers to look beyond the animosities of the past and embrace an uncerta...

The Russian Revolution was as red as blood. The Bolsheviks promised that they were building a new society, a workers’ paradise that would change the nature of mankind itself. What they ended up constructing was the largest prison that the world had ever seen, a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that spanned half the globe. It was a country where people's lives meant nothing, less than nothing—and they knew it. But no matter what atrocity that the Soviets committed—the secret police, the ...

In his thousand-day presidency, John F. Kennedy led America through one of its most difficult and potentially explosive eras. With the Cold War at its height and the threat of communist advances in Europe and the Third World, Kennedy had the unenviable task of maintaining U.S. solidarity without leading the western world into a nuclear catastrophe. In Kennedy's Wars, noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents...

FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE'Monumental and highly readable... by smartly knitting together the past with the present, Zubok brings a prescient and fresh perspective' Financial TimesA sweeping, original history of the Cold War, from an acclaimed historian of the USSRWhy did the Cold War erupt so soon after the Second World War? How did it escalate so rapidly, spanning five continents over six decades? ...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a riveting account of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War.In the Reagan-Gorbachev era, the United States and the Soviet Union came within minutes of nuclear war, until Gorbachev boldly launched a campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the 1986 Reykjavik summit and the incredible events that followed. In this thrilling, authoritative narrative, Richard Rhodes draws on personal interviews with both Soviet ...

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring The Cold War dominated international life from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But how did the conflict begin? Why did it move from its initial origins in Postwar Europe to encompass virtually every corner of the globe? And why, after lasting so long, did the war end so suddenly and unexpectedly? Robert McMahon considers these questions and more, as well as looking at the legacy of the Cold War a...

A dramatic account of the Cold War's turning point, the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland, by a key player in that weekend's world-changing events.In October 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met for a forty-eight-hour summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. Planned as a short gathering to outline future talks, the meeting quickly turned to major international issues, including the Strategic Defensive Initiative ("Star Wars") and the possibility of eliminating a...

"A masterful account of the Cold War by a distinguished historian in full stride." —G. John Ikenberry, Foreign AffairsTo the amazement of the public, pundits, and even the policymakers themselves, the ideological and political battles that endangered the world for half a century came to an end in 1990. How did that happen? What caused the cold war in the first place, and why did it last as long as it did?To answer these questions, Melvyn P. Leffler h...