The Cold War

The first truly commercial one-volume history of the Cold War

A brilliantly arresting historical work, John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction. 
 
 In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning... 
 
 Here is the truth behind every spy thriller you've read: why America and the Soviet Union became locked in a deadly stalemate; how close we came to nuclear catastrophe; what was really going on in the minds of leaders from Stalin to Mao Zedong, Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev, how secret agents plotted and East German holidaymakers helped the Berlin Wall fall. It is a story of crisis talks and subterfuge, tyrants and power struggles - and of ordinary people changing the course of history. 
 
 'Gripping' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Len Deighton 
 
 'Superb ... brimful of racy incident' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Independent on Sunday 
 
 'A lively and readable history' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The Times 
 
 'Force 9 on the Richter scale' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Spectator 
 
 John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, and 'the dean of cold war historians' (The New York Times). He is the author of numerous books, including Security and the American Experience, the book recently pressed on his cabinet and senior security staff by President Bush.

John Lewis Gaddis is an internationally renowned historian of the Cold War and has been called 'the dean of Cold War historians' by The New York Times. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, is on the advisory board of the Cold War International History Project and has served as a consultant on the CNN television documentary Cold War. He is also the author of numerous books, including The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972), Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982), We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997), The Landscape of History (2002) and Surprise, Security and the American Experience (2004). He is a 2005 winner of the US National Humanities Medal and lives in New Haven.

In 1950, when Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il-Sung met in Moscow to discuss the future, they had reason to feel optimistic. International Communism seemed everywhere on the offensive: all of Eastern Europe was securely in the Soviet camp; America's monopoly on nuclear weapons was a thing of the past; and Mao's forces had assumed control over the world's most populous country. The story of the previous five decades was one of the worst fears confirmed, and there seemed as of 1950 little sign, at least to the West, that the next fifty years would be any less dark. 
 
In fact, of course, the century's end brought the widespread triumph of political and economic freedom over its ideological enemies. In The Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis makes a major contribution to our understanding of this epochal story. Beginning with the Second World War and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union, he provides a thrilling account of the strategic dynamics that drove the age. Now, as Britain once more finds itself in a global confrontation with an implacable ideological enemy, The Cold War tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand.

John Lewis Gaddis

An extraordinary treatise on the need to teach the principles of sound strategy to today's leaders... It makes sense of our world, but is also capable of beautifully crafted pithy historical judgements. ... It is a book that cares about liberty, choice and a moral compass, that warns against the hubris of an angry Bonaparte on the turn in a Russian winter, against leaders who do not listen or learn. A training manual for our troubled times

On Grand Strategy is many things - a thoughtful validation of the liberal arts, an argument for literature over social science, an engaging reflection on university education and some timely advice that lasting victory comes from winning what you can rather than all that you want.

A brilliant book - learned, seductively written, deep

Gaddis has indisputably earned the right to plow different fields of historical inquiry, which he does in On Grand Strategy with self-evident glee and peripatetic curiosity

A long walk with a single, delightful mind, which makes it much easier for the reader to comprehend the lessons that cohere across continents and millennia

John Lewis Gaddis

Praise for On Grand Strategy

An extraordinary treatise on the need to teach the principles of sound strategy to today's leaders... It makes sense of our world, but is also capable of beautifully crafted pithy historical judgements. ... It is a ...

On Grand Strategy is many things - a thoughtful validation of the liberal arts, an argument for literature over social science, an engaging reflection on university education and some timely advice that lasti ...

A brilliant book - learned, seductively written, deep

An extraordinary treatise on the need to teach the principles of sound strategy to today's leaders... It makes sense of our world, but is also capable of beautifully crafted pithy historical judgements. ... It is a ...

On Grand Strategy is many things - a thoughtful validation of the liberal arts, an argument for literature over social science, an engaging reflection on university education and some timely advice that lasti ...

A brilliant book - learned, seductively written, deep

An extraordinary treatise on the need to teach the principles of sound strategy to today's leaders... It makes sense of our world, but is also capable of beautifully crafted pithy historical judgements. ... It is a ...

On Grand Strategy is many things - a thoughtful validation of the liberal arts, an argument for literature over social science, an engaging reflection on university education and some timely advice that lasti ...

A brilliant book - learned, seductively written, deep

Books by John Lewis Gaddis

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