Will I love The Global Cold War?

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… show more.

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… show more.