The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Volume 1)

The condition of the book and its price was just right. I cannot give you a regular book review since I am still browsing its contents. I plan to complete the set.

The method adopted in this history is to break down the story into what might be regarded as bite-sized chunks. It's a risky approach, but the editors have succeeded very well.Volume One is entitled "Origins" and a 600+ pages might not be the most obviously appealing presentation of the origins. There are 23 standalone essays, each addressing a certain aspect and each written by an expert in that aspect. The editors have done a good job in the breakdown and also in the selection of authors. I generally found the essays to be both credible and readable. There seems to have been a strict word-count limit imposed, because the essays are consistently just over 20 pages long.Inevitably, I had favourites and less-favourites, but I am pleased to have got this far and look forward to volumes 2 and 3.

If you try to stand these three volumes up on a bookshelf they will surely fall over—to the left. Read with an open mind, but cautiously. (These are expensive volumes, so borrowed them from the Library.)As an American who lived through the entire Cold War, I learned a lot about events to which I had been fairly oblivious as they unfolded. Therefore it has been most interesting to revisit this long “cold” conflict from liberal professors’ viewpoints, especially now they are given the advantage of hindsight a couple decades after the cold war ended.The many chapters are each written by different individuals, so there is some overlap and admittedly some difference of opinion among them. However, in general the authors seem disparaging of American leader’s interpretations of Soviet and Chinese actions during the period, so are thus fairly critical of many policies and actions by the successive American administrations. The authors don’t seem to be particularly interested in elaborating on the many terrible atrocities committed by the Communist nations. Now that some Communist archives have been opened, they seem more sympathetic to the USSR and Communist Chinese viewpoints (as well as European sensitivities).