The Cold War

John Lewis Gaddis

In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning...

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 East German holidaymakers helped the Berlin Wall fall. It is a story of crisis talks and subterfuge, tyrants and power struggles - and of ordinary people changing the course of history.

First published:: 2007
Published by:: Penguin Books
Length:: Hardcover 352 pages

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About the author

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.