It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The Cold War

The Cold War

Summary

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.

About the author

John Lewis Gaddis

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University and was the founding director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. His previous books include The United States and the Origins of the Cold War; Strategies of Containment; The Landscape of History; Surprise, Security, and the American Experience; and The Cold War. The New York Times calls him 'the dean of Cold War historians'. He has won two undergraduate teaching awards at Yale and was a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal. His George F. Kennan: An American Life won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Biography.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more