The Columbia Guide to the Cold War

Booklist

One of the most concise and usable handbooks available.... An excellent starting point for further investigation and refinement of questions.

The V V A Veteran

A balanced, well argued short chapter on the Vietnam War... also contains an excellent listing of relevant people, events, and terms.

The VVA Veteran

A balanced, well argued short chapter on the Vietnam War... also contains an excellent listing of relevant people, events, and terms.

V V A Veteran

A balanced, well argued short chapter on the Vietnam War. . . also contains an excellent listing of relevant people, events, and terms.

Booknews

First in a new series of guides to periods of American history and culture, this book presents a narrative overview of key events and issues in the history of the Cold War, as well as a dictionary of terms, institutions, and people; a condensed chronology; and an annotated resource section listing books, articles, films, novels, websites, and CD-ROMs on Cold War themes and topics. The inclusion of photographs would have made this comprehensive reference even more satisfying. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Kirkus Reviews

A valuable encyclopedia on the Cold War-one of the few available-containing a wealth of information not otherwise available in one place. Kort (Social Science/Boston Univ.; The Soviet Colossus: A History, 1984, etc.) deals in a short, 96-page introductory essay with the origins and development of the Cold War, including the reasons for the deterioration of relations between the US and the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War; the impact on US domestic politics; why the Cold War expanded into the Third World; détente and its decline; and what factors ultimately ended it. Most useful is the discussion of the differing interpretations of the struggle, a debate between the traditionalists, who have argued that the problem lay in an expansionist Soviet Union; the revisionists, who blamed US economic expansionism, almost without regard to the Soviet dictatorship; and the post-revisionists, who rejected this economic determinism and the failure to take the Soviet threat into account, while not neglecting the security concerns of the Soviet Union. Kort holds that recent research in the Soviet archives strengthens the traditionalist and post-revisionist views. The last three sections of the volume are a collection of short biographies of the major participants, a concise chronology, and a 140-page critical bibliography of the subject, grouped by period and by topic, with comments on the utility of particular texts for instructional purposes. A very useful approach to the subject. .