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The Cold War
A New History
by John Lewis Gaddis
The Yale history professor offers a concise overview of the Cold War.
Penguin Press, 352 pages
12/29/2005
$27.95
ISBN: 1594200629
Nonfiction
History
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor Jonathan Rosenberg
In the book's narrative sweep, analytical insights, and deft incorporation of the most recent scholarship, Gaddis has written the best one-volume treatment of the East-West struggle.
The Independent Catherine Merridale
It beckons and pleases exactly as successful lectures must, drawing the reader into complicated material with the aid of anecdotes, examples, and rapidly moving narrative.
The New York Times Book Review Michael Beschloss
Gaddis's fresh takes on the era's leaders and episodes will most likely have an enormous influence.
Boston Globe Michael C. Boyer
It is the most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written.
Kirkus Reviews
A superb introduction to a complex period in world history. [1 Nov 2005, p. 1170]
San Francisco Chronicle Michael Taube
Gaddis' book is straightforward, easy to read, well researched and free from technical components that might have confused some readers.
Washington Post James Mann
Gaddis's latest book boils down the history of the entire Cold War to a sometimes brilliant 266 pages of text, in trenchant, lucid prose intended not for historians and specialists but for ordinary readers.
Library Journal Ed Goedeken
[A]n outstanding and tightly written account of the titanic struggle between the two major world powers that arose after World War II. [15 Nov. 2005, p 76]
Daily Telegraph Max Hastings
This book provides a crisp, salutary reminder of how vast were the stakes in the East-West conflict.
The Guardian James Buchan
It is pleasant, on reading Gaddis, to see the public events of one's childhood or youth gathered into a lucid and elegant narrative and, as it were, put away out of sight.
Booklist Vanessa Bush
Aimed at a new generation, this book is nonetheless enlightening for all generations. [15 Nov 2005, p. 17]
The New York Times William Grimes
Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject.
New York Observer Glenn C. Altschuler
The Cold War: A New History tells a story almost certain to make us feel good. As we should. Though many will surely argue with Mr. Gaddis about who deserves the credit, the better team did win. But by implying that our side, sooner or later, gets it right, Mr. Gaddis discourages serious scrutiny of our nation’s behavior, past and present. It would be useful
to consider that in the Cold War, the United States came in second to last. [9 Jan. 2006]
The Economist
While the books that made Mr Gaddis's reputation, in particular his 1982 classic, “Strategies of Containment”, necessarily concentrated on the American perspective, his latest work provides a much more rounded picture by drawing on the flood of information that has come out from the Soviet side since the end of the cold war. Mr Gaddis recounts not only what Truman, Kennedy and Reagan were thinking, but also how Stalin, Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev responded to the same events.
Wall Street Journal Brendan Simms
A readable, authoritative and humane book.
Daily Telegraph Dominic Sandbrook
Gaddis enjoys a formidable reputation as the foremost diplomatic historian of his generation and, not surprisingly, he is a masterful guide through the complexities of Cold War strategy... Yet many readers may well come away from The Cold War feeling slightly unsatisfied. Gaddis admits that his agent had to "convince" him to write the book and, graceful as it is, there is something perfunctory about it.
Salon Laura Miller
Gaddis' book should provide lots of Americans with an understanding of the past that will help them better grasp how the world got to be the way it is today, but for a historian he seems to have missed one crucial point. History is, as the saying goes, one damn thing after another, and it ain't over yet.
New York Review Of Books Tony Judt
The Cold War: A New History is likely to be widely read in the US: both as history and, in the admiring words of a blurb on the dust jacket, for the "lessons" it can teach us in how to "deal with new threats." That is a depressing thought.
The Spectator David Caute
The more often Gaddis retraces his own footsteps on this subject the more it sounds like a fireside fairytale with a happy ending.
 The average user rating for this book is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
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