The Cold War: A History [Hardcover]

Martin Walker (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805031901 | ISBN-13: 978-0805031904 | Publication Date: April 1994

Goes beyond the headlines of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, Korea, and Vietnam to take an in-depth look at the situation of the United States--before, during, and after the Cold War. 12,500 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Walker, Washington bureau chief for Britain's Guardian , here traces the course of the Cold War from Yalta in 1945 through the Korean War, the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontations, Vietnam, the "New Cold War" during the Reagan administration, the advent of glasnost and perestroika under Gorbachev and the "year of miracles" (1989) which brought down the Berlin Wall. The author is concerned with demonstrating, first, that the superpowers found limited responses to crises (the Berlin blockade and airlift didn't grow into a direct military confrontation; the Korean War didn't spread throughout Asia) and, second, how the stability resulting from the Cold War balance of power set the stage for a new international economic system. This cogent reevaluation of the Cold War as a form of economic competition argues that its end marked a shift away from the geo-strategic toward the geo-economic and an accelerated expansion of world trade.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

With the Cold War over, a spate of books are beginning to appear trying to explain what it all meant. Like Edward Pessen's recent Losing Our Souls: The American Experience in the Cold War or H.W. Brands's The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (both LJ 11/1/93), Walker, U.S. bureau chief for London's the Guardian, goes over familiar ground, treading the same turf diplomatic historians have charted for the past 20 years. For an experienced journalist, Walker's prose is restrained and sometimes tedious. His most interesting point is his comparison of the last years of Brezhnev's rule with that of George Bush's presidency, arguing that both administrations dealt feebly with domestic issues, much to the detriment of their respective populations. For Walker, America's challenge will be how it can best fight the new war for control of the global economy. For general collections and for those emphasizing contemporary history and politics.
Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co (April 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805031901
• ISBN-13: 978-0805031904
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #89,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Misses the Mark. Not Recommended, May 26, 2005

By 

T. Carlsen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cold War: A History (Paperback)

Instead, I highly recommend the masterpiece book on the Cold War called The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis or The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown. Yale professor Gaddis has been a renowned scholar of the Cold War for decades, and Oxford scholar Brown has been a renowned and award-winning scholar of the Cold War for a long time. In contrast, I do not recommend this book by Martin Walker, who is mainly a newspaper journalist. You can do better.

I read the first seventy pages of this book by Walker and stopped reading it because I thought that the author simply did not "get it right." For starters, the book oddly begins at the end of World War II, when the seeds of the Cold War actually started during World War II, and even before that. USA and USSR emerged from WWII as superpower rivals, distrustful of each other. The author has a poor understanding of Franklin Roosevelt's strategy towards the end of the war, does not explain Stalin's aspirations, and misunderstands the Truman administration's strategy to deal with Stalin, I believe. I also believe that Walker is far too forgiving of authoritarian communism and the ability to deliver on the false promises it did not.

Walker's book is also dated. New information has been released since this book was written quite awhile ago. To his credit, Walker is a good writer and has a good grasp of most of the history of the Cold War, but there are better, more recent books about the Cold War.

I also recommend the Pulitzer Prize-winning book called Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dense but enjoyable, January 31, 2000

By 

"matt_raw" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cold War: A History (Paperback)

Walker's depth of knowledge is on display here - it is impressive to say the least. For a reader who is not familiar with the key political players and events of the Cold War, this in-depth look at the Cold War is intimidating at first. However, Walker does a commendable job of stating his argument early on and supporting it with both primary and secondary sources (even if one has qualms with his "no one's fault" argument). The argument is logically traced from Yalta to the fall of communism and makes for an altogether enjoyable read.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Histiry as it should be written., July 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cold War: A History (Paperback)

There are four really impressive features about this book. First, it is so evidently fair-minded, trying to look at the history of the planet from 1945-1990 from the point of view of Russians, Americans, Europeans and the developing countries alike. Second, it is phenomenally well-researched, taking us from the private letters between JFK and European leaders like prime minister Macmillan or between Reagan and Gorbachev to the secret Politburo discussions on the invasion of Afghanistan. Third, it blends together the economic as well as the politico-military history of the era, and keeps reminding us that while the Soviets throught they were fighting an ideological war, the West knew that is was fundamentally an economic struggle, and that in the end the money would win. Finally, this author writes like a dream, clearly and yet movingly, mixing anecdote and deep historical perspective. I bought this book because the New York Times review called it is the best single volume history of the Cold War, and they were absolutely right. Having read this, I also bought the same author's 'America Reborn', which is even more brilliant.