The Cold War: A New History

This book is a sweeping summary of what the author believes to be the principal events of the over forty year long confrontation between Communism and Capitalism called the Cold War. Gaddis is in every sense of the word an expert on the Cold War phenomenon and has used his expertise to write a concise, readable, and accurate summary of it. He correctly gives the late George F. Kennan credit for crafting the confrontation strategy of dynamic containment that in end allowed the Capitalist West to prevail over the Soviet Union and its client states. He also provides fascinating glimpses of how American Presidents from Truman to George H. W. Bush applied this strategy and how the Soviet leadership reacted to its application. Not all historians agree that Gaddis has interpreted many aspects of this period correctly, but most would acknowledge his knowledge of the period. So is this the definitive book on the Cold War? The short answer is, no it is not. It is an excellent summary and introduction to the complex political, diplomatic, and military activity that produced, perpetuated, and ended the Cold War. It is an invitation to the reader to make a serious study of the Cold War era and discover in detail what a unique period it was in the history of the world.

Yale history professor John Lewis Gaddis is America's foremost historian of the Cold War. Since the publication of "The United States and the Origins of the Cold War" in 1972, he has written a half dozen more books on the subject, each time finding a new perspective on the superpower standoff that took place between 1946 and 1991. Prior to the 1970's, American historians, for the most part, put the blame of the origins of the Cold War on the Soviet system in general and on Josef Stalin in particular. Gaddis' early work was original insofar as it gave a more balanced perspective on the American/Soviet confrontation. After World War II, both superpowers acted rationally to protect their interests, having sacrificed many lives in hard-fought battles. Each side was protecting a way of life they thought morally superior. In the current work under review, Gaddis' views seem to be evolving. Looking back at the Cold War in light of events since 1991, he concludes that it was primarily the power of ideas that won, since nuclear weapons had made military confrontation unthinkable. The liberal democracies and market economies of the West were better able to provide for their citizens than the command economies of the totalitarian system. The West offered their citizens hope while the Soviets instilled theirs with fear. Gaddis now believes it was the Soviets who were primarily responsible for starting the Cold War. But why did the Cold War last so many years? Why didn't people rise up earlier? One reason, of course, was nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons prolonged the Cold War. The West had few options other than detente and containment. Gaddis has few kind words for the Nixon-Kissinger detente that left hundreds of thousands of disillusioned people behind the Iron Curtain without hope. He recounts in this book how certain key individuals facilitated change. Among these "saboteurs of the status quo" were Ronald Reagan, Margret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and Lech Walesa. According to Gaddis, when Pope John Paul II went to Poland and kissed the ground, it marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Also, when Ronald Reagan sought to exploit the weaknesses of the Soviet Union by building an antimissle shield that he knew the Soviets couldn't match, he helped bring about the demise of the system. Also, adding to the slipstream of the demise was the unwitting assistance of Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev was different from previous Soviet leaders - and the world is forever in his debt - in that he realized the arms race could not continue and that the Soviet Union could no longer maintain control over the populations of Eastern Europe. Although Gaddis' work has been used by the Bush Administration as an endorsement of spreading democracy in the Middle East, it should be noted that the saboteurs of the status quo - and Bush sees himself as such - can only facilitate change. The real change, Gaddis argues, must come from the bottom up. Ron

The Good: - Gaddis' 'Cold War' more than fulfills that basic requirement of all good books: style. The author never dwells on trifles, the book never gets dull, and you are more likely than not to be left wanting more when you finish it. - More importantly though, the analysis is simply brilliant. Gaddis seems to have made it his purpose in this text to tackle the big 'whys' of the cold war: why the major events played out the way they did, why the major actors did what they did, why it all started, and why it ended. - Another strong point is the author's encyclopedic knowledge of his sources. Gaddis is able to deploy the 'perfect quote' with unerring skill, and his evident familiarity with recently opened archives gives this book a distinct edge over older works on the same topic. The Bad: - The flip side of my second point above is that with so much analysis in a book which is so short to begin with, there is fairly little of the traditional historical narrative in this book. While that is probably a good thing for those who are already familiar with the major events of the conflict, it does detract somewhat from the ability of this book to function as an introduction to the cold war (which is the purpose Gaddis states in the preface). - Otherwise, my only actual complaint about the book (and really, it's more of a quibble) is that the commendable objectivity which the author uses to describe the opening and middle events of the cold war seems to fade somewhat as we draw near to its close. Descriptions of Reagan, for example, are positively fawning, while those of Thatcher are only somewhat less exuberant. In Summary: -This is one of the most gripping works of non-fiction of any kind, and far and away the best single book about the cold war I have yet read. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the history of the 20th century.

John Lewis Gaddis, arguably the preeminent Cold War historian, provides a very readable and lucid account of the central issues, themes and events of the Cold War. Synthesizing the vast scholarship he conducted over the year into a single volume, Gaddis tries to provide an introduction to this defining conflict - especially to those who know little of it. While the book doesn't often go into the interesting details and intricacies as much as I would have liked, it does a superb job at outlining and analyzing the central issues of the Cold War. Only someone with such a tremendous understanding of the conflict as Gaddis would be able to do it properly with such a discerning eye. Even for those who have read extensively on the Cold War, this book puts the important currents of the war into a compelling framework. It not only reinforces one's own knowledge but provides an amazing focus on what is most important for proper understanding and analysis of the war.