The Columbia Guide to the Cold War

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"War that is very strong and very hot ends with either death or peace, whereas cold war neither brings peace nor gives honor to the one who makes it." So wrote a 14-century Spanish tactician, who might just as well have been describing the second half of the 20th century, when the world's superpowers and their allies waged a war that only sporadically involved bloodshed yet consumed the energies and economies of most of the planet.

Historian Michael Kort here assembles a fact-filled compendium of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union (and their allies) in several parts. The first is a brief narrative history of the war, from its beginnings at the end of World War II until its last gasp at the end of the 1980s; in that narrative, Kort also describes the different schools of history that emerged from the conflict, from traditionalists like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who maintained that confrontation with an aggressive Soviet Union was inevitable, to postrevisionists like Geir Lundestad, who placed responsibility for the conflict on America's shoulders.

The second part of Kort's book is an A-to-Z almanac of the conflict's principal actors and events, followed by a chronology. The fourth and final part, a heavily annotated bibliography of the scholarly (and some popular) literature, will be especially useful to students of the cold war seeking reference materials.

Kort's thoughtful encyclopedia is the product of years of work, and of great value to serious readers of modern history. --Gregory McNamee