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).     

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).     

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).     

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. $ .     

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.     

Review Article: Cold War or Cold Peace

JOHN LEWIS GADDIS. The United States and the End of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. ix, 301. $34.95 (CDN);

MICHAEL J. HOGAN, ed. The End of the Cold War: Its Meanings and Implications. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xv, 294. $13.95 (us), paper;

JAMES CHACE. The Consequences of the Peace: The New Internationalism and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xii, 221. $32.50 (CDN).     

Review Article: Hot War,Cold War,New War

STANLEY KARNOW. Vietnam, A History. New York: Penguin, 1984. Pp. xi, 752. $10.95 (US); GABRIEL KOLKO. Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, The United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Pp. xvi, 628. $25.00 (US); TIMOTHY J. LOMPERIS. The War Everyone Lost-and Won: America's Intervention in Vietnam's Twin Struggles. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 192. $22.50 (US); R.B. SMITH. An International History of the Vietnam War: The Kennedy Strategy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Pp. xii, 429. $25.00 (US); HARRY O. SUMMERS, Jr. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. New York: Dell, 1984. Pp. 288. $3.95 (US).     

Intelligence in the Cold War

This paper asserts that Cold War intelligence was essentially military intelligence. It provides a personal perspective on the UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) and how Cold War intelligence was influenced by the experiences of individuals in the Second World War. It reviews little-studied aspects of the US–UK intelligence relationship, the NATO intelligence dimension, and the British Commanders'-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in (East) Germany (BRIXMIS), effectively legitimate spies in uniform. It concludes with some reflections on the changes the end of the Cold War brought to the work of the DIS.     

Money and Cold War Security

Hubert Zimmermann , Money and Security: Troops, Monetary Policy, and West Germany's Relations with the United States and Britain, 1950–1971 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2002 . xvi + 265 pp.     

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.     

Constructing a Cold War Peace

Book reviewed in this article:
Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963     

Inside a Cold War Insider

H. W. Brands, Jr. Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918–1961 .     

The Cold War as history

Jonathan Haslam's Russia's Cold War is the latest effort by a western scholar to synthesize new research and findings on the Soviet role in the Cold War. Citing an array of published Russian archival material, Haslam seeks to resuscitate the traditional western Cold War view that the conflict was the inevitable result of communist expansionism. However, the material cited by Haslam does not support such a conclusion and he ignores conflicting evidence and views. The Cold War was a war of choice not necessity, the result of distorted perceptions and calculations by both sides, aided and abetted by generations of ideologically aligned historians.