'Cold War' is the story of the half-century since the end of the Second World War - the story of our lives. Its framework is the confrontation, military and ideological, between two great powers that dominated the world during these years. Its background is the constant threat of nuclear war, deterrence through "mutually assured destruction", that paradoxically maintained the peace between those great powers. It is a story of crises and conflicts on a global scale: of the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis, of savage wars fought in mountains, deserts, paddy-fields and jungles, of tanks in the streets of Warsaw, Budapest and Prague, of spies, student riots and encounters in space.It is also a story of shifting economic fortunes and dramatic social change, of oil price rises, blue jeans, rock 'n' roll and inner-city violence.
Recollections of statesmen, often in their own words, whose decisions led to momentous events, and of the ordinary men and women - Britons, Germans, Americans, Russians - whose lives were bound up in those events provides the first comprehensive history for the general reader to benefit from the recent opening of Soviet, East European and Chinese archives as well as formerly classified American documents.
With over 600 illustrations in colour and black and white, this epic history will help readers understand what it was like to live through the events of this unprecedented period and what lay behind them. In a driving narrative that is both gripping and informative, the true story of the Cold War can at last be told.
