Content area
Full Text
The Cold War: A History in Documents. By Allan M. Winkler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-19-512356-5. Photographs. Maps. Illustrations. Index. Pp. 159. $30.00.
Part of Oxford University Press's "Pages from history" series, The Cold War: A History in Documents is the latest among a veritable spate of recently published document collections dealing with the social, political, and military implications of the Cold War. Aimed at what this reviewer presumes to be a high-school-level audience (I found the level of writing and the interpretations far too simplistic for most college undergraduates), the volume begins with a brief introduction that includes definitions of various primary sources and instructions on how to "read" primary source documents. From there, the book proceeds down the rather predictable path of Cold War periodization, beginning with the origins of the struggle and ending with the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Appended to the work is a brief-and in my opinion rather incomplete-timeline followed by a superficial and unimaginative "further reading" section that not only...