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...

In this fascinating new interpretation of Cold War history, John Lewis Gaddis focuses on how the United States and the Soviet Union have managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War confrontation without going to war with one another.
Using recently-declassified American and British documents, Gaddis argues that the postwar international system has contained previously unsuspected elements of stability. This provocative reassessment of contemporary history--particularly as it relates to the current status of Soviet-American relations--will certainly generate discussion,...

The Cold War ended with an exhilarating wave of events: the toppling of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the dissident poet Vaclav Havel, the revolution in Romania. Americans rejoiced at the dramatic conclusion of the long struggle. "But victories in wars--hot or cold--tend to unfocus the mind," writes John Gaddis. "It can be a dangerous thing to have achieved one's objectives, because one then has to decide what to do next." In The United States and the End of the Cold War, Gaddis provides a sharp focus on the long history of the Cold War, shedding new light on its sudden ending, as...

What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today. Gaddis points out that while the historical method is more sophisticated than most historians realize, it doesn't require unintelligible prose to explain. Like cartographers...

When Strategies of Containment was first published, the Soviet Union was still a superpower, Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, and the Berlin Wall was still standing. This updated edition of Gaddis' classic carries the history of containment through the end of the Cold War. Beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt's postwar plans, Gaddis provides a thorough critical analysis of George F. Kennan's original strategy of containment, NSC-68, The Eisenhower-Dulles "New Look," the Kennedy-Johnson "flexible response" strategy, the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of detente, and now a...

This book is a path-breaking work that uses biographical techniques to test one of the most widely debated questions in international politics: Did the advent of the nuclear bomb prevent the Third World War? The book's authors argue almost unanimously that nuclear weapons did have a significant effect on the thinking of the leading statesmen of the nuclear age, but a dissenting epilogue from John Mueller challenges this thesis.

This book sets current concerns within a broad historical and theoretical context; explores the depth and scope of this presumed solidarism amidst the difficulties of acting on the basis of a more strongly articulated liberal position; and underscores the complexity and abiding tensions inherent in the relationship between order and justice. Chapters examine a wide range of state and transnational perspectives on order and justice, including those from China, India, Russia, the United States, and the Islamic world. Other chapters investigate how the order-justice relationship is mediated...

Historians of the Cold War, argues William Hitchcock, have too
often overlooked the part that European nations played in shaping
the post-World War II international system. In particular,
France, a country beset by economic difficulties and political
instability in the aftermath of the war, has been given short
shrift.
With this book, Hitchcock restores France to the narrative
of Cold War history and illuminates its central role in the
reconstruction of Europe. Drawing on a wide array of evidence
from French, American, and British archives, he shows that...

Providing new insight on the intellectual and cultural dimensions of the Cold War, Michael Latham reveals how social science theory helped shape American foreign policy during the Kennedy administration. He shows how, in the midst of America's protracted struggle to contain communism in the developing world, the concept of global modernization moved beyond its beginnings in academia to become a motivating ideology behind policy decisions.

After tracing the rise of modernization theory in American social science, Latham analyzes the way its core assumptions influenced the Kennedy...