The Cold War: The Essential Readings

This collection brings together the most influential and commonly–studied articles on the Cold War. The editors draw on the wealth of international and multinational research on the subject to select contributions covering the origins, evolution and termination of the Cold War from 1945 to 1990. They focus particularly on the United States, former Soviet Union, Britain, Germany and France, but also look at the role of the Cold War in other parts of the world.

A substantial introduction to the volume outlines current debates and issues in Cold War studies. The text comprises four parts – Cold War Origins, First Attempts at Conflict Management, War and Détente, and The End of the Cold War – over eight chapters. Each part is prefaced with a concise headnote, setting the chapters in their historiographical context. This combination of articles and editorial material provides students with easy access to seminal work and an analytical framework with which to approach their studies.

1. Introduction: The Cold War as History Ann Lane.

Part I: Cold War Origins.

2. ′Introduction′ from Preponderance of Power. M. Leffler.

3. ′Dividing the World′ from We Now Know. (J. L. Gaddis).

Part II: First Attempts at Conflict Management.

4. ′Integrating Europe or Ending the Cold War? Churchill′s Post–war Foreign Policy′ from The Journal of European Integration History. (K. Larres).

5. ′Khrushchev and Kennedy: The Taming of the Cold War′ from Inside the Kremlin′s Cold War. (V. Zubok and K. Pleshakov).

Part III: War and Détente.

6. ′The Vietnam War and the Superpower Triangle′ from The Fifty Years′ War. (R. Crockatt).

7. ′The Failure of the Détente of the 1970′s from Detente and Confrontation. (R. L. Garthoff).

Part IV: The End of the Cold War.

8. ′Who Won the Cold War? 1984–1991′ from The Devil We Knew. (H. W. Brands).

9. ′Some Lessons from the Cold War′ from The End of the Cold War. (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.).

Index.

Klaus Larres is Reader and Jean Monnet Professor in the School of Politics at the Queen′s University of Belfast. His previous work includes Politics of Illusion: Churchill, Eisenhower and the German Question (in German, 1995); A History of the Federal Republic, 1949–1989 (co–author, in German, 1999); The Federal Republic of Germany since 1949 (co–editor, 1996), Germany and the United States in the 20th Century (co–editor, in German, 1997), Uneasy Allies: British–German Relations and European Integration since 1945 (ed., 2000), and Germany since Unification: The Development of the Berlin Republic (ed., 2000).

Ann Lane is Lecturer in the War Studies Group at King′s College London. She is author of Britain, the Cold War and Yugoslav Unity, 1941–1949 (1996), and co–editor with Howard Temperly of The Rise and Fall of the Grand Alliance (1996).

"This ... is one of the finest guides available" Frontline

"This collection brings together the most influential and commonly–studied articles on the Cold War. The combination of articles and editorial material provides students with easy access to seminal work and an analytical framework with which to approach their studies." History Online