Towards the Cold War

ROBERT DALLEK. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. ix, 657; DANIEL YERGIN. Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977. Pp. x, 526; JOHN H. BACKER. The Decision to Divide Germany: American Foreign Policy in Transition. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1978. Pp. x, 212; ROBERT J. DONOVAN. Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1977. Pp. xvii, 473; YONOSUKE NAGAI and AKIRA IRIYE, editors. The Origins of the Cold War in Asia. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1977. Pp. ix, 448; THOMAS G. PATERSON. On Every Front: The Making of the Cold War. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979. Pp. xii, 210.     

Gold Wars in the Cold War

Book reviewed:
Francis J. Gavin. Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958–1971 . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 280 pp. Illus., tables, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00 (cloth).     

Cold War Geography

Neil Smith . American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization . Berkeley, CA : University of California Press , 2003 . xxvii+557 pp. $ (hardcover), $ (paper).     

Cold War Orientalism

Books reviewed:
Christina Klein. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination , 1945 – 1961. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xiv + 316 pp. Notes, Index, Illustrations. $55.00 (cloth), $21.95 (paper).     

The Cold War in retrospect

The Cambridge history of the Cold War is a three‐volume work by 75 contributors, mostly from the United States and the United Kingdom, and is intended as ‘a substantial work of reference’ on the subject. The bulk of the text deals, in frequently overlapping chapters, with the main protagonists of the conflict—viz. the United States, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China—and the areas in which they clashed. At the same time, it aims to go ‘far beyond the narrow boundaries of diplomatic affairs’, although it is not always successful in doing so. In analysing the origins of the Cold War, the contributors pay perhaps too much attention to ideology as opposed to geopolitics, a flaw which is made easier by the absence of sufficient historical background. On the other hand, the duration of the conflict and the failure of various attempts at détente is more successfully explained in terms of the zero‐sum game nature of the conflict and its progressive extension from Europe across the rest of the world. When it comes to the end of the Cold War, the overall conclusion is that this came about through both a shift in the international balance of power following the Sino‐Soviet split and the political and economic problems of the Soviet bloc. It is generally agreed that Mikhail Gorbachev's willingness to abandon old shibboleths both at home and abroad was a major factor in bringing about the end of the conflict. The three volumes, while not always an easy read, are the outcome of considerable research and expertise in both primary and secondary sources and will repay careful study.     

Detente and Deterrence in the Cold War

Keith L. Nelson, The Making of Détente: Soviet-American Relations in the Shadow of Vietnam
Terry Terriff, The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy     

The Old Cold War

James McAllister . No Exit: America and the German Problem , 1943 – 1954 . Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press , 2002 . vii+264 . Index and bibliography. $ .     

The Cultural Cold War

Book reviewed:
Hugh Wilford. The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? London, Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003. xvi + 328 pp. Illustrations, index. $115.00 (cloth).     

Soviet Espionage and the Cold War

Book reviewed in this article:
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov. The Secret World of American Communism
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds., Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response
Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America – The Stalin Era
James G. Ryan. Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism
Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel, Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy
Ted Morgan, A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone, Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster
Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America
Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism
Daniel P. Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience     

Cold War historiography at the crossroads

How is the Cold War understood in an expanding and diversifying historiographical field? Conceptual precision and specificity seem to be giving way to a looser understanding of the Cold War as an era that encompassed different although interconnected conflicts and transformations. Some scholars ask for specificity and consistency while current centrifugal trends point to multiple approaches and centres of interest. Diversity is galvanising the field, but historians need to (re)define their object of inquiry and strive for at least a minimum of conceptual clarity. In particular, we should aim at a broad cultural understanding of the Cold War, contextualise it in larger processes of historical change without confusing the two dimensions, and reassess relations between Europe and other Cold War contexts.