
A brilliantly arresting historical work John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction In 1945 war came to an end But a whole new terror was only just beginning Here is the truth behind every spy thriller you've read why America & the Soviet Union became locked in a deadly stalemate; how close we came to nuclear catastrophe; what was really going on in the minds of leaders from Stalin to Mao Zedong Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev how secret agents plotted & East German holidaymakers helped the Berlin Wall fall It is a story of crisis talks & subterfuge tyrants & power struggles
- & of ordinary people changing the course of history ' Gripping' Len Deighton ' Superb brimful of racy incident' Independent on Sunday 'A lively & readable history' The Times ' Force 9 on the Richter scale' Spectator John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A Lovett Professor of History at Yale University & 'the dean of cold war historians' (The New York Times) He is the author of numerous books including Security & the American Experience the book recently pressed on his cabinet & senior security staff by President Bush