‘Gripping’ Len Deighton. When the Second World War ended in 1945, peace proved to be an illusion — a new and terrifying era was only just beginning. John Lewis Gaddis’s The Cold War is a brilliantly arresting historical work that takes us closer than ever before to the moment the world stood on the brink of destruction. 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 how East German holidaymakers helped bring the Berlin Wall down. It is a story of crisis talks and subterfuge, tyrants and power struggles — and of ordinary people changing the course of history. ‘Superb … brimful of racy incident’ Independent on Sunday. ‘A lively and readable history’ The Times. ‘Force 9 on the Richter scale’ 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.
ISBN 13: 9780141025322
Author: John Lewis Gaddis
