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The specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917-1953. By Melvyn P. Leer. (New York: Hill a Wang 1994. xii, 147 pp. Cloth, $20.00, ISBN 0-8090-8791-X. Paper, $7.95, ISBN 08090-1574-9.)
Melvyn P. Leer writes history like a bootlegger caught out in Prohibition. His last book was a boxcar of beer, potent by the pitcher but bulky and hard to hide. Then the revenuers closed in, and he switched to distilled spirits that deliver a quicker kick and fit in the trunk of a car.
Here Leffler explains the origins of the Cold War in 130 pages. Quite appropriately, he identifies the conflict between the superpowers as combining ideological animosity with geopolitical jeopardy. The former he traces to 1917, when Vladimir Lenin shouted at Woodrow Wilson from the rubble of one European...