The Cold War

[A] wide-ranging historical account ... [T]his book provides readers who are unfamiliar with both the military and non-military aspects of the Cold War with a highly useful introduction. * Journal of Contemporary History * A knowledgeable account of the Cold War based on the latest research literature ... A book worth reading. * Militargeschichtliche Zeitschrift (Bloomsbury Translation) * The Cold War, in many respects, defined the Twentieth Century. In this important book Jeremy Black illustrates the ways in which military issues and ideological conflict were intrinsically connected to one another. By showing how the confrontation of the post-1945 years had its roots in the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War, he also succeeds in illuminating the causes of the East-West tensions that have returned to plague the world today. Written with insight and panache, this is a work of great erudition and genuine global reach. * Richard Toye, Professor of History, University of Exeter, UK * Professor Black skillfully deploys his considerable expertise in military and diplomatic history and presents a concise narrative that demonstrates the complexity and global nature of the Cold War. This is a history of the superpower conflict and the crises that engulfed the Third World. From Black's emphasis on the Russian Civil War and the root causes of the ideological and geopolitical conflict of U.S. and U.S.S.R. to detente and proxy wars and to his argument about the fall of the Soviet Union as the result of a crisis of totalitarianism, this book is international history at its best. * Ingo Trauschweizer, Associate Professor of History, Ohio University, USA * Jeremy Black deftly analyzes the Cold War military struggles within the broader global context of domestic politics, foreign policy, economics, anti-colonialism, nationalism, geostrategy and ideology examining a long period of sustained hostility and proxy wars dating to the Russian Revolution of 1917. He evaluates not just the traditional US/NATO versus USSR//Warsaw Pact rivalry, rather, he expertly relates military conflict and violence to the more complex international dynamics that roiled empires, alliances, nation-states, and former colonies. * Stanley D.M. Carpenter, United States Naval War College * Jeremy Black's new book provides us with a thought-provoking and wide-ranging overview that highlights the nature of the Cold War as war. An impressive synthesis of research by a scholar at the peak of his powers. * Holger Nehring, University of Stirling, UK *