Book description
The Cold War shaped the world we live in today - its politics, economics, and military affairs. This book shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the last century created the foundations for most of the key conflicts we see today, including the War on Terror. It focuses…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Global Cold War as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book is a treasury of significant but unknown historical information. Even if you are well-read on the Cold War, the global perspective which the book gives will change what you think you know.
Structuring his argument chronologically and thematically, O. Westad makes the most comprehensive case for the Cold War’s impact on the Global South. I learned more about the modern history of Africa and East Asia and their subsequent decolonization and state-building than in any other book.
I also appreciated how the author does not take an ideological stance for the USA or the USSR but allows the…
From Theodor's list on Books to make you reconsider what you know about history.
This book, published in 2005, was a game changer for students of the Cold War, myself included.
Westad delivers a damning blow to the notion—still held by many—that the Cold War was, at its core, a conflict between Soviet and American superpowers over the fate of Europe, with tangential dalliances on the periphery. The Global Cold War instead places the Third World at the heart of the conflict, inspiring a generation of scholars to follow suit.
This book, which I first read as a wide-eyed graduate student, provoked me to understand the Cold War in the Third World as a…
From Jessica's list on the Cold War in the Third World.
If you love The Global Cold War...
Bad Karma
This book is a collection of essays on Asian affairs written over the author's half century career as a Professor of Chinese at New York University. The author's point of view is critical of Washington's policies in Asia as a modernized continuation of European and especially Japanese colonialism and imperialism,…
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