Product Description
Even fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, it is still hard to grasp that we no longer live under its immense specter. For nearly half a century, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, all world events hung in the balance of a simmering dispute between two of the greatest military powers in history. Hundreds of millions of people held their collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union, two national ideological entities, waged proxy wars to determine spheres of influence–and millions of others perished in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Angola, where this cold war flared hot.

Such a consideration of the Cold War–as a military event with sociopolitical and economic overtones–is the crux of this stellar collection of twenty-six essays compiled and edited by Robert Cowley, the longtime editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Befitting such a complex and far-ranging period, the volume’s contributing writers cover myriad angles. John Prados, in “The War Scare of 1983,” shows just how close we were to escalating a war of words into a nuclear holocaust. Victor Davis Hanson offers “The Right Man,” his pungent reassessment of the bellicose air-power zealot Curtis LeMay as a man whose words were judged more critically than his actions.

The secret war also gets its due in George Feiffer’s “The Berlin Tunnel,” which details the charismatic C.I.A. operative “Big Bill” Harvey’s effort to tunnel under East Berlin and tap Soviet phone lines–and the Soviets’ equally audacious reaction to the plan; while “The Truth About Overflights,” by R. Cargill Hall, sheds light on some of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets.

The often overlooked human cost of fighting the Cold War finds a clear voice in “MIA” by Marilyn Elkins, the widow of a Navy airman, who details the struggle to learn the truth about her husband, Lt. Frank C. Elkins, whose A-4 Skyhawk disappeared over Vietnam in 1966. In addition there are profiles of the war’s “front lines”–Dien Bien Phu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs–as well as of prominent military and civil leaders from both sides, including Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Dean Acheson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Richard M. Nixon, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others.

Encompassing so many perspectives and events, The Cold War succeeds at an impossible task: illuminating and explaining the history of an undeclared shadow war that threatened the very existence of humankind.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Incomplete and ultimately biased
This book disappointed me and I agree with the other reviewers who say it is incomplete and too heavily focused on Korea and Vietnam. Even beyond that, the selection and content of the essays is negative to the point of bias against the US--I do not agree with the reviewer who says the theme is "America won." To the contrary, many of the essays go out of their way to point out alleged American errors of diplomacy and military action, and ignores significant American steps that led to success, such as Reagan's decision at Reykjavik not to compromise on SDI. While the book is framed as a military history, it does discuss arms treaties and the importance of missile technology (and limitations thereon) to the Cold War; not to mention Reagan's role in structuring the limitations talks is a non-trivial oversight. Further, there is nothing about submarine warfare or undersea cable tapping, Grenada, Afghanistan, Uganda, Nicaragua or other East-West proxy wars, the terror caused by Soviet projection of military power (e.g., Hungary 1956), the Walker Navy spy ring, military uses of cryptography, or other important areas. If you want to read about American errors in Vietnam, buy the book, but otherwise look for a more complete and balanced account of the whole conflict.

Limited scope...
The quality of the individual articles is very high.As a collection, however, something is lacking.A better title would have been, "The Vietnam and Korean Wars with Bonus Material".Such huge portion of the book is dedicated to southeast Asia that one would think it was heart of the Cold War.I find it amazing there isn't a single article on Afghanistan (heck, he could have even have put in the Vietnam section that dominates the book and called the chapter "Russia's Turn").In fact, the word Afghanistan doesn't even appear in the entire text.Not a word on the wide variety of surrogate wars fought in the Americas or the Middle East either.

Another flaw is that the introductory pages to each article written by the editor add almost nothing to the text.The articles would stand better on their own.

So basically I'd give the articles five stars.I'd give the editing/collation perhaps two stars.I gave it four overall because the bulk of what your read is very good and I'll give credit where credit is due.Nonetheless, the narrow scope of the collection and the poor quality of the editor's introductions is annoying.

interesting but unsatisfying
there are a number of vignettes in this book that are interesting, however the general tone of the book is very America centric, perhaps with an underlying tone of "we won", which detracts from those essays that are more balanced. Generally this was unsatisfying, frustrating eneough to write this review, as although the better essays are quite good, overall there is a lack of substance.

However, the title is a tad misleading .

Excellent but Incomplete
The book is a series of articles by many prominent modern historians and it begins at the beginning (a very good place to start) of the Cold War with an article entitled, "The Day the War Started."

Unfortunately, the book essentially ends in the early 1980s with, "The War Scare of 1983."What this means is the book does not consider the last years of the Cold War or how it ended.Another missing piece is that, other than the first series of articles on the war's beginnings and the more well known aspects of the Cold War such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and Berlin, the focus of the book is on the Korean and Vietnam Wars.It ignores other aspects of the Cold War such as our military involvement in Central America throughout the 1980s, the whole issue of brush fire wars in Europe's former colonies in which one side or the other was supported by the US or USSR, and the bipolarization of mid-level conflicts, such as in the Middle East, where, again, the US and USSR supported opposing sides.These missing aspects are not trivial in the context of the Cold War.

Having said that, I'm glad I bought the book, and I've already recommended it to others.It's impossible to not get a lot out of a book that includes articles by the likes of Williamson Murray, John F. Guilmartin, Jr., Douglas Porch, Stephen E. Ambrose, Victor David Hanson, and far more.But, in the end, it is incomplete - hence the three stars.

The Military History of a Time of Peace, Unless You Were There
From the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the Soviet Union almost a half century later the two major powers in the world faced a kind of war. It was called the cold war because not much fighting occurred. To be sure, there was some in places like Korea, Viet Nam and Afghanistan. And there were some time where the two superpowers faced each other over loaded weapons such as Berlin and Cuba. But all in all, this was the longest time since the Roman Empire that the two strongest countries on the globe didn't go to war.

During much of this time the Military History Quarterly has provided a venue for the most prominent historians of our time to present articles on points of history as it was being lived. Robert Cowley is the founding editor of MHQ. In this volume he has selected articles from the Cold War period that serve to be a history of the Cold War written as it happened. The authors include some of the most prominent historians of that time, and some others that are not so well known but who provide an insight into the times. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from World Policy Journal, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2007. The length of the article is 2378 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: "Terrorism": why the definition must be broad.(FORUM: ON TERRORISM)
Author: Caleb Carr
Publication: World Policy Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 24Issue: 1Page: 47(4)

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