The Cold War: A World History - Odd Arne Westad
The Cold War: A World History - Odd Arne Westad
The Cold War: A World History - Odd Arne Westad
History
By
Odd Arne Westad
Penguin Books Ltd
'Masterly ... a book of resounding importance for appraising our
global future as well as understanding our past' Richard Davenport-
Hines, The Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year
'A masterful survey that will set the standard for Cold War
scholarship for years to come' Jonathan Steele, London Review of
Books
For over forty years the demands of the Cold War shaped the life of
almost all of us. There was no part of the world where East and
West did not, ultimately, demand a blind and absolute allegiance,
and nowhere into which the West and East did not reach. Countries
as remote from each other as Korea, Angola and Cuba were defined
by their allegiances. Almost all civil wars became proxy conflicts
for the superpowers. Europe was seemingly split in two indefinitely.
Arne Westad's remarkable new book is the first to have the distance
from these events and the ambition to create a convincing, powerful
narrative of the Cold War. The book is genuinely global in its reach
and captures the dramas and agonies of a period always
overshadowed by the horror of nuclear war and which, for millions
of people, was not 'cold' at all: a time of relentless violence,
squandered opportunities and moral failure.
Penguin Books Ltd