We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,548,674.85 | Books Available: 800,091 | Members Online: 209

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - The Cold War: A Military History

The Cold War A Military History
Author: Stephen E. Ambrose, Caleb Carr, Thomas Fleming, Victor Hanson

Even fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, it is still hard to grasp that we no longer live under its immense specter. For nearly half a century, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, all world events hung in the balance of a simmering dispute between two of the greatest military powers in history. Hundreds of millions of peopl... more »e held their collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union, two national ideological entities, waged proxy wars to determine spheres of influence?and millions of others perished in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Angola, where this cold war flared hot.

Such a consideration of the Cold War?as a military event with sociopolitical and economic overtones?is the crux of this stellar collection of twenty-six essays compiled and edited by Robert Cowley, the longtime editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Befitting such a complex and far-ranging period, the volume?s contributing writers cover myriad angles. John Prados, in ?The War Scare of 1983,? shows just how close we were to escalating a war of words into a nuclear holocaust. Victor Davis Hanson offers ?The Right Man,? his pungent reassessment of the bellicose air-power zealot Curtis LeMay as a man whose words were judged more critically than his actions.

The secret war also gets its due in George Feiffer?s ?The Berlin Tunnel,? which details the charismatic C.I.A. operative ?Big Bill? Harvey?s effort to tunnel under East Berlin and tap Soviet phone lines?and the Soviets? equally audacious reaction to the plan; while ?The Truth About Overflights,? by R. Cargill Hall, sheds light on some of the Cold War?s best-kept secrets.

The often overlooked human cost of fighting the Cold War finds a clear voice in ?MIA? by Marilyn Elkins, the widow of a Navy airman, who details the struggle to learn the truth about her husband, Lt. Frank C. Elkins, whose A-4 Skyhawk disappeared over Vietnam in 1966. In addition there are profiles of the war?s ?front lines??Dien Bien Phu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs?as well as of prominent military and civil leaders from both sides, including Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Dean Acheson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Richard M. Nixon, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others.

Encompassing so many perspectives and events, The Cold War succeeds at an impossible task: illuminating and explaining the history of an undeclared shadow war that threatened the very existence of humankind.

From the Hardcover edition.

ISBN-13: 9780812967166
ISBN-10: 081296716X
Publication Date: 11/7/2006
Pages: 496
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Military >> General

Back to the Top ↑

Search - The Cold War: A Military History

Loading...