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John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin, 2005. Pp. xv+ 333. $27.95/$ 16.00.
With this welcome one-volume survey of the Cold War, one of America's leading diplomatic historians returns to the topic for the first time since 1997's We Now Know. Largely a synthesis of existing secondary sources, The Cold War is meant primarily "for a new generation of readers for whom the Cold War was never 'current events'" (x). On those terms, Gaddis succeeds extraordinarily well, offering a concise narrative that is written in an erudite but accessible, even entertaining style.
The Cold War distills the best of We Now Know and improves on it in at least two respects. Most obviously, it carries the story past the Cuban Missile Crisis to its end. (Surely this book was called We Now Know More at some stage of the editing process.) Gaddis can now deal with détente and the rise of human rights activism, the Reagan/Gorbachev relationship, and the events of 1989. second, while Gaddis' world still turns on the Washington-Moscow axis, figures from the "periphery" play pivotal roles, especially as events unfold in the 1960s and 1970s. A subtle example of this more diffuse geographic emphasis is the map of military bases and alliances in the era of Détente (96-7). The decision to look down from the North Pole rather than center on one continent illustrates the global sweep of the conflict. (Interestingly, this is one of several maps borrowed...