Customer Reviews

Understanding the Cold War: A Historian's Personal Reflections

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Prof. Ulam's recent death need not deter anyone from finding this book a welcome salve to the usual academic tomes that even he sometimes produced during his many years as a father of Sovietology. His studennts and colleagues knew him as a real "mensch" and this book shows those who didn't get to know him how a powerful set of personal experiences, both before and during the Cold War, made it possible for Adam to create a unique body of knowledge which was truly innovative.

Those who were not terrible cognizant of the sometimes stark and sometimes ambigious realities of the Cold War will find this an engaging read.

I have never read any of Professor Ulam's other works (I believe the tally ended at 18, with this book, after Ulam's death). I had been told by several friends and colleagues that his were, if nothing else, a brilliant marriage of the scholarly and the approachable. The latter is more the case here, wherein Ulam provides his life story, with the tumultuous changes in Europe (both East AND West) as the backdrop.

More than just a series of anecdotes strung together with a calendar, Ulam presents us with gripping and often moving tales from his past - including, most notably (to me), his departure from Poland at the age of 16, just six days before Hitler's invasion.

This is a book I'll proudly display on my shelf; it's certainly not one I would have run out and bought the second it hit the shelves, but it was, like a roller-coaster ride through the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, a breathtaking journey, and one I'll revisit again and again.

Written by Adam B. Ulam (1922-2000) an erudite professor emeritus of Harvard University, Understanding The Cold War: A Historian's Personal Reflections, is both an engaging, informative examination of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and a an intimate, candid confession of how the world-changing effects of the Cold War personally affected his family. Vividly written and tracing a personal legacy in the post World War II world, Understanding The Cold War offers the reader a different perspective on history, embracing the microcosmic as well as the world-spanning shape of events.