Out of the Cold: The Cold War and Its Legacy

Description

Featuring first hand accounts by international politicians and diplomats along with analyses by leading scholars, this unique collection of essays provides insights from multiple perspectives to foster better understanding of international relations during and after the Cold War. Experts from both sides of the "iron curtain" shed light on the origins, struggles, ending, and legacy of the conflict that dominated the second half of the twentieth century and that still affects current East-West relations, the securing and dismantling of weapons of mass destruction, and the instability of many regions. With a particular focus on diplomatic relations, the book looks at the origins of the conflict from Yalta to Korea, the prelude to Detente from Cuba to Vietnam, followed by the move from Detente to dialogue. It then addresses such issues as strategic weapons, the impact of the war on scientific research, intelligence, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Lastly, it examines the legacy of the Cold War across regions of the world, including Europe, Japan, India, China, and the lessons to be drawn for today's diplomatic relations and intelligence. With contributions from Howard Baker, Jr., Sir Anthony Brenton, Susan Eisenhower, Grigoryi Karasin, Alexander Likhotal, Kishan Rana, Ying Rong, and more, the volume presents a truly international treatment of a subject of global dimensions and importance. Students of politics and international relations will find it invaluable as will Foreign Service practitioners, and instructors teaching the Cold War and foreign affairs.

Michael Fitzgerald is Professor of Political Science, and former Chair of American Studies at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, US. Allen Packwood is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, UK and the Director of the Churchill Archives Center. He is the co-curator of Churchill and the Great Republic, a Library of Congress exhibition (2004).

Timely ... enlightening ... The writers are more often than not former participants from the conflict: diplomats, soldiers, official translators, the daughter of a US President, an Ambassador to Poland, or a broadcaster for British television. The reader trusts their accounts because they are highly personal and the authors were there in the room: this is no biographical guess or archival reconstruction. -- Dylan Kissane * Political Studies Review * The Cold War has passed into history--but in the pages of Out of the Cold it is vividly brought back to life. Here we can breathe the atmosphere of that era of confrontation, especially through the rival accounts of so many witnesses, on both sides of the conflict, whose first-hand impressions have been recaptured. -- Peter Clarke, Professor Emeritus of Modern British History at Cambridge University, UK, and author of Mr. Churchill's Profession (2012) This book brings together an impressive array of witnesses, historians and commentators. Casting fascinating light on the origins, course and conclusion of the Cold War, it is both consistently thought-provoking and highly readable. -- Richard Toye An excellent collection that will be of great use to students of the Cold War. Bringing together eyewitnesses, participants, and scholars, it is full of insights on the Cold War's origins, development, and consequences. Teachers will be particularly impressed by this volume's combination of first-hand accounts and analysis. * Artemy M. Kalinovsky, author of A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan * Centuries from now the Cold War will be remembered as a tectonic ideological and geopolitical struggle for global domination. Readers, be they in the future or our present, will know from Out of the Cold that it was also a story of people, of personalities drawn from throughout the world and with recollections and perspectives across the entire ideological spectrum. This invaluable book brings the Cold War alive even as the conflict itself begins to recede into memory, and will long serve as both a valuable guide to the topic, and as a primary source in its own right for generations still to come. * Jeffrey A. Engel, Director, Center for Presidential History, Southern Methodist University * As with most edited volumes, the contributions are varied, but much of this assessment of the Cold War is quite thought-provoking. The reader is immersed in competing perspectives, including those of former adversaries [...] One emergent issue that this volume gives strong insight into concerns the Cold War's legacy on Europe. -- Anthony Smith * New Zealand International Review *