The Cold War: A History Paperback – June 15, 1995

A mature assessment of four decades of Cold War tension. A close read of this well written book would pretty much explain how society worked in the second half of the 20th century.

Read this book years ago, but it was worth rereading. This is mostly told from the Western and American side, chronicling the steps and missteps that American policy makers took to counter the threat of communist expansionism. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan all get their share of due credit, but ironically the President on whose watch the Cold War ended, George Herbert Walker Bush, is described as "sleepwalking through history" during the critical moments of the unraveling of the Soviet Union. There is indeed some evidence that Bush saw the demise of the Soviet Union as a threat to stability and the established order and actually sought to slow down the process somewhat rather than aid and abet it. But it is Gorbachev and not any Western leader who really emerges as the key actor in this phenomenon, although what he brought about was surely not what he intended. This was a good book, opinionated but fairly evenhanded, definitely at the top of the list on CW history.

Although I have not read this book, I picked it up years ago, and only recently in cleaning did I donate it to the local library. Much to my dismay, upon returning to school (Johns Hopkis School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)), to complete my masters, David Calleo, one of my professors and a godfather of European studies, requires this text for his class. If David Calleo requires it, then it can't be that bad. I will update the review when I finish the book and the class.

Great book - incredible detail and insight - I lived through it and now I understand it!

A super book-- detailing events and the historical characters involved, who acted and reacted in my younger lifetime that I had no idea occurred!

Martin Walker analyzed the fifty-year standoff between Communism and Capitalism in his book `The Cold War: A History.' Walker traced the mistrust that quickly grew between the allies of World War II into the frosty relationship between two world superpowers until the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. For good measure, Walker extended the story a couple of years to better assess the aftereffects of the conflict.Walker interpreted the events of the Cold War, rushing headstrong into the political and economic effects of each milestone while keeping a balanced vision among not only the two superpowers, but also the European allies and sometimes China. Walker accomplished an admirable feat of delivering objective analysis of the Cold War with a global viewpoint. Students of Political Science have their text of the Cold War, but what about those who want to first learn about the events themselves before studying the analysis of them?In some respects, Walker leaves the reader with a `Cold War Gap' about the actual events of the era. His casual mention of the Rosenberg case and Joe McCarthy do not provide sufficient detailed knowledge about these pertinent topics of the Cold War era. His brisk overviews of the two American Wars during the Cold War assume the reader has already read about them. Walker mentions the Grenada invasion in the early 1980s but gives no details about the medical students or any explanation about why Reagan justified the invasion. I cannot even recall if he explained the civil war in Angola or the Somalia / Ethiopia conflict or the Allende election in Chile. While Walker mentioned all of the events, he wrote about some of them as though we already know what happened.A book such as Cold War: An Illustrated History by Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing fills the Cold War Gap. The Isaacs & Downing book contains the breadth of facts, names, and details of the Cold War beyond a survey of United States History without getting bogged down in the complicated theory of Walker's book, or assuming that the reader knows about the hot spots of the Cold War.There are some cases where Walker provided some good explanations of Cold War events. He outlined the Suez Crisis in October 1956, the Iranian Revolution on 1978, and the Afghan turmoil that led to Russia's reluctant invasion in December of 1979.In most cases, though, Walker takes the reader beyond the events of the Cold War. I would have preferred to read the Isaacs & Downing book before reading this book, but nobody advised me to do so. I found a syllabus on the internet from a teacher at NYU named Molly Nolan who used the book as her primary text for a course on the Cold War. The course calls the Walker book a basic survey text on the Cold War, but Walker's analysis is anything but basic.Walker's book is the `major leagues' of the Cold War. A book such as the Isaacs & Downing book is the minor leagues, but if you need the seasoning, a few months in the minors is not a bad idea.The version of the book that I read with ISN `9780805034547' has the familiar nuclear fallout shelter symbol with a cherry red background. There are a few typos in the text but no egregious errors.Global economic theory can sometimes have a sobering effect on a reader, but it is an important component of the Cold War - and Walker's book does a good job at giving you the dope on the economics of the Cold War. His insightful coverage of the Cold War is best appreciated by students who already know the major events of the era.

Fine product and quick delivery

Seemed a bit clinical for such a hot button issue.