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When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War Hardcover – November 7, 2017

by Jeffrey A. Engel (Author)

4.6 79 ratings

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Based on unprecedented access to previously classified documents and dozens of interviews with key policymakers, here is the untold story of how George H. W. Bush faced a critical turning point of history—the end of the Cold War.

The end of the Cold War was the greatest shock to international affairs since World War II. In that perilous moment, Saddam Hussein chose to invade Kuwait, China cracked down on its own pro-democracy protesters, and regimes throughout Eastern Europe teetered between democratic change and new authoritarians. Not since FDR in 1945 had a U.S. president faced such opportunities and challenges.

As the presidential historian Jeffrey Engel reveals in this page-turning history, behind closed doors from the Oval Office to the Kremlin, George H. W. Bush rose to the occasion brilliantly. Distrusted by such key allies as Margaret Thatcher and dismissed as too cautious by the press, Bush had the experience and the wisdom to use personal, one-on-one diplomacy with world leaders. Bush knew when it was essential to rally a coalition to push Iraq out of Kuwait. He managed to help unify Germany while strengthening NATO. Based on unprecedented access to previously classified documents and interviews with all of the principals, When the World Seemed New is a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of a president with his hand on the tiller, guiding the nation through a pivotal time and setting the stage for the twenty-first century.

Print length

608 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date

November 7, 2017
Dimensions

6.25 x 2 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0547423063
ISBN-13

978-0547423067
See all details

Richard Norton Smith
213
Hardcover
1 offer from $20.40

Editorial Reviews

Review

"To read his account of the administration's foreign policy is to yearn for an earlier era of American diplomacy, when blarney about the nation's omnipotence was not permitted to substitute for realistic prudence....Engel's excellent history forms a standing--if unspoken--rebuke to the retrograde nationalism espoused by Donald J. Trump." --The New York Times
"Engel's "When the World Seemed New" is a fine, often stirring account of these times...The book is at its best when it juxtaposes disparate events: Mr. Bush calibrating the distinctions between a pro-democracy protest in Budapest and another in Beijing; Mr. Gorbachev arriving in Beijing just a month before the crackdown ("the last thing the Chinese leadership needed at that moment"); students in Tiananmen shouting 'Where is our Gorbachev?'" "An absorbing book." --The Wall Street Journal
"By far the most comprehensive--and compelling--account of these dramatic years thus far is Jeffrey Engel's When the World Seemed New." -- The National Interest
"When the World Seemed New is a remarkable book about a remarkable person. Southern Methodist University professor Jeffrey Engel describes in engrossing detail the patient and sophisticated strategy President George H.W. Bush pursued as the Cold War came to an end....Anyone interested to any degree in how today's world took shape will find When the World Seemed New absorbing." -- The Dallas Morning News

About the Author

JEFFREY A. ENGEL is the founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. Educated at Cornell, Oxford, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Yale University. He has authored or edited ten books on American foreign policy, including The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989 and The China Diary of George H. W. Bush: The Making of a Global President. Born above the Mason-Dixon line, he now lives and teaches in Dallas, Texas.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (November 7, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 608 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0547423063
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0547423067
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.95 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 2 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #516,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #258 in International Diplomacy (Books)
- #1,173 in US Presidents
- #15,532 in United States History (Books)

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4.6 79 ratings

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Jeffrey A. Engel

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Jeffrey A. Engel is founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, and before joining SMU's faculty in 2012 taught history and public policy at Texas A&M University while serving as the Verlin and Howard Kruse '52 Founders Professor and Director of Programming for the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs. A Senior Fellow of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and graduate of Cornell University, he additionally studied at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University, and received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Engel has authored or edited twelve books on American foreign policy, including Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy (Harvard University Press, 2007), which received the Paul Birdsall Prize from the American Historical Association; Local Consequences of the Global Cold War (Stanford University Press and the Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008); The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President (Princeton University Press, 2008); The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989 (Oxford University Press, 2009); with Joseph R. Cerami, Rethinking Leadership and "Whole of Government" National Security Reform (Strategic Studies Institute, 2010); Into the Desert: Reflections on the Gulf War (Oxford University Press, 2012); with Andrew Preston and Mark Lawrence, America in the World: A History in Documents from the War with Spain to the War on Terror (Princeton University Press, 2014); with Thomas J. Knock, When Life Strikes the Presidency: Scandal, Death, and Illness in the White House (Oxford University Press, 2017); When the World Seemed New: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War (Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, 2017, and with Jon Meacham, Peter Baker, and Tim Naftali, Impeachment: A History (Random House, 2018).

A frequent media contributor on historical and current events, his scholarly and popular articles have appeared in such journals as Diplomatic History; Diplomacy & Statecraft; Project Syndicate; Perspectives on History; Enterprise & Society; The International Journal; Air & Space Magazine, The Dallas Morning News; and The Los Angeles Times.

He is currently writing a narrative history of the 1992 election.

Contact: jaengel@smu.edu

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mel klein

The fall of Communism brilliantly recounted in a page-turner you can't put down.

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

The most eloquent and mesmerizing history book about an ineloquent president who found himself at a critical turning point in the 20th century. Jeffrey Engel, the Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, has written a page turner more familiar in the fiction genre. Researching the Bush 41 archives, interviewing most of the still living participants and poring through thousands of documents and contemporary news sources, Engel artfully explores the essential conundrum of America's reaction to the cascading fall of Communism. Was it really the end? What if the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed an oncoming train? George H.W. Bush was wise enough to refrain from gloating, and disciplined enough to refrain from embracing Gorbachev's gambit lest it was a trap.

Engel tells the story with great wit and an eye for the absurd. I keep rereading the chapter about the fall of the Berlin Wall, which probably was the result of a tired press secretary mistakenly announcing that the gates would be opened immediately, followed by an unanswered phone call from the Brandenburg Gate commander seeking confirmation. As the rumors spread, the flailing Communist regime was suddenly gripped by terror that controlling the thousands of East Berliners at the gate, and the thousands of West Berliners waiting to embrace them, could end in a river of blood as it had in Tienanmen Square just weeks earlier. And the Communist commander did the unthinkable: he opened the Gate. Within hours, instead of rivers of blood there were thousands of young drunk Germans kissing and dancing on the Wall and passing the bottle to their tormentors who traded The Party for the party. But more than anything the story that Engel weaves is of President Bush, in the face of Right Wing resistance, cautiously embracing the realization that the end of the Cold War was at hand and the challenge of not getting in it's way. When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War

10 people found this helpful

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J. Hershey

Valuable reporting and analysis of critical diplomacy

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2018

Verified Purchase

VI am grateful to Jeffrey Engel for authoring When the World Seemed New. I feel it capably illuminates the difficult and grinding hard work required by the chief executive and the presidential team to formulate and execute constructive foreign policy in a complex and hazardous epoch. Also, I have not encountered many books that do so able a job of explaining the diplomatic interactions of two world leaders at such a critical and defining time.

Before reading Engel’s book, I read Jon Meacham’s Destiny and Power and William Taubman’s biography of Gorbachev. These excellent books gave me very helpful insights to the psychological makeups of the two protagonists. These insights greatly aided my understanding of the interactions so deftly recapped in Engel’s work.

6 people found this helpful

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Wendy Sue

Detailed Account of the Bush Sr. Years

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2020

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I am almost finished reading this book and can't wait to finish it. Although it does tell a lot about President H.W. Bush, the author mainly focuses on what is going on with the Soviet Union, Germany, Europe, and Gorbachev. The writer's style is intense and detailed which makes this book a bit hard to read. I wish there was more on Bush and not the external elements at the time. I may have to purchase another biography on Bush to understand his presidency more. With that said, this book does inform us about events during 1989 - 1993 and is an interesting read in that respect.

2 people found this helpful

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marilyn Huddell

This is a compelling portrait of a period during which ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a compelling portrait of a period during which I was a young homemaker focusing on my family, not the world around me. How could I have missed so much? Thank you Jeffrey Engel for writing a thoroughly readable history of an important era. My sons will find this under their tree Christmas morning.

4 people found this helpful

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Jim Grew

Remarkable window into a pivotal time.

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2018

Verified Purchase

Could hardly put it down. Paints in the details of world-changing events that collided when H.W. was President. Wonderful storytelling done so deftly that facts enhance the pace.

3 people found this helpful

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James Gallen

The Foreign Policy Of George H. W. Bush

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2019

I have read many presidential books and “When The World Seemed New” is one of the best. Its subject is the unique set of challenges and opportunities that confronted George H W. Bush during his presidency. Bush is portrayed as a man in his element, sure of his view of the world and his place in it, prudent, diligent, with a vision of where he wanted to take the United States who guided the U.S. through step by step process to lead it there. Contrary to common perception, Bush and his team entered the White House intending to modify and not merely extend the Reagan foreign policy. Though part of his administration, Bush viewed Reagan as being too cooperative with the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev and was determined to toughen the American stand.

President Bush is often remembered for Desert Storm and as the Liberator of Kuwait. Readers of this tome are quickly reminded that this was only the best remembered of many crises with which Bush had to deal during his leading role in the great world drama. As Bush took the helm as Gorbachev was winning the world public relations battle as the forward-looking agent of perestroika. While freedom tested its limits in Eastern Europe, students in Beijing organized protests against the government. The suppression in Tiananmen Square raised congressional calls for sanctions that Bush had to balance against the need to keep the door open for Chinese engagement in the world community. As change took hold in Eastern Europe Bush had to walk the tightrope of offering encouragement to the reformers and giving Gorbachev enough to enable him to keep the right wing out of power but withholding enough to maximize the odds of freedom prevailing. As the Evil Empire receded the victorious allies of World War II had to wrestle with the problem of German unification and its place in or out of NATO. The resolution of that issue was followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its replacement by many republics, including the Russia of Boris Yeltsin. Almost tangentially related to the demise of the Warsaw Pact, Saddam Hussein took the opportunity to invade Kuwait. Outraged by the naked aggression that shock his sensibilities, Bush wove together an international coalition and broad support, or at least acquiescence, for Desert Storm.

I remember the incidents chronicled in this work and have read other books about President Bush but no where have I seen the depth of analysis and character study as in this one. Author Jeffrey A. Engel portrays Bush as a gentleman of the American aristocracy who devoted the time to establishing the personal relationships with leaders that, while not ensuring success, made negotiations easier. Personal demeanor notwithstanding, the velvet glove covered an iron hand that deftly took advantage of American superiority to achieve the goals of the advancement of democracy and freedom accompanied by the maintenance of American power.

These pages introduced me to new insights into the issues of 1989-1993. I remember talk of whether the two Germanies would be re-united but did not appreciate the depth of fear among European states that a unified Germany would resume the practices that led to two world wars. I certainly had not understood Bush’s resolve that America needed to remain a major player in European affairs, with troops on the ground, to keep the Europeans from squabbling as they had in the past. By the end of this book I understood more than ever how necessary the administration of George H. W. Bush was for its time.

“When the World Seemed New” is a fascinating read and a must for anyone with in interest in the end of the Cold War.

2 people found this helpful

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