Books on the Cold War

[Sean of the Shed]

Anybody got any recommendations for a good history of the Cold War? I'd prefer something on actual events rather than any individual biography of people who were participants of the (non) conflict.

[Levin]

Postwar by Tony Judt is brilliant, but not technically a cold war history. It's just Europe after the second world war. It does give a good overview of the politics of different countries though.

Gaddis' Cold War was pretty good, covered all the bases but I seem to remember feeling slightly unsatisfied by it. It might have been trying to cram too much into a quite short book.

[Sean of the Shed]

Yeah, I looked at Gaddis and saw it was only 372 pages, which doesn't seem like it will go into a lot of detail and might skirt past a lot of stuff. We're talking about a period of around forty years, after all.

[Nefertiti2]

Also not a history of the Cold War ( and I now see it's something you specifically ruled out) but would still recommend William Taubman's Khrushchev The Man and his Era

also One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis

haven'r read but Odd Arne Westad's The Cold War looks interesting

[ursus arctos]

That does look good.

A good deal of important archival material is still sealed, which means that we will be seeing work based on new evidence for the next several decades.

[Sean of the Shed]

Westad's book does look like a good option.

[Felicity, I guess so]

I’ve been doing a 20th century France timeline for a module and was struck by how often those 40 years now get bracketed off and minimised now. The BBC had one that failed to mention the French CP after the 30s.

I guess I understand it in the sense that my students get exercised by colonial atrocities and liberation movements rather than how much support the PCF had but the exclusion of the left in Italy andFrance is a crucial byproduct of the Cold War

[Sean of the Shed]

I've just been reading a history of the Cosa Nostra which mentions the left in Italy and how the Mafia and Christian Democracy conspired against the left. The mafia benefitted far more with CD and favoured the right despite the brutal crackdown under the Fascists. The left have always strongly opposed the mafia.

[ursus arctos]

In part because the Left saw its role as delivering better social services than the Mafia without all of the crime.

One also should not discount the role of the US, which viewed the Christian Democrats as a "bulwark against Communism" and the Mafia as "people we could (and did) work with".