A Brief History of the Cold War - Hardcover

by Lee Edwards (Author), Elizabeth Edwards Spalding (Author)

The Cold War was a crucial conflict in American history. At stake was whether the world would be dominated by the forces of totalitarianism led by the Soviet Union, or inspired by the principles of economic and political freedom embodied in the United States. The Cold War established America as the leader of the free world and a global superpower. It shaped U.S. military strategy, economic policy, and domestic politics for nearly 50 years.

In A Brief History of the Cold War, distinguished scholars Lee Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards Spalding recount the pivotal events of this protracted struggle and explain the strategies that eventually led to victory for freedom. They analyze the development and implementation of containment, détente, and finally President Reagan's philosophy: "they lose, we win." The Cold War teaches important lessons about statecraft and America's indispensable role in the world.

Front Jacket

The euphoria that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union lasted only a moment, dashed by the horror of 9/11. But the rise of a new global enemy driven, like the old one, by a hatred of Western freedom and democracy makes the lessons of the Cold War as relevant as ever.

The half-century struggle between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, a struggle that determined whether hundreds of millions would live in freedom or slavery, is one of the most dramatic and consequential epochs in history. Yet to the generation that has grown up since the Cold War's astonishingly peaceful conclusion, this titanic geopolitical conflict can seem as remote as the Punic Wars.

In this accessible and highly readable account, Lee Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards Spalding explain the essential events, persons, and ideas that shaped the Cold War, from Harry Truman's strategy of containment to Richard Nixon's détente to Ronald Reagan's simple yet powerful philosophy of "we win, they lose."

When an American student can write, as one did recently to his local newspaper, that communism "is certainly not an ideology to be feared," even though it still oppresses more than a billion human beings from China to Cuba, the urgency of teaching this history to a new generation could not be clearer.

A nation that prizes its freedom must never forget the wisdom and courage with which the Cold War was waged and won.

Author Biography

LEE EDWARDS is a historian who has written extensively about the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of biographies of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and William F. Buckley Jr. and editor of The Collapse of Communism, among many other books. He is the distinguished fellow in conservative thought at The Heritage Foundation, chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and adjunct professor of politics at the Catholic University of America.

ELIZABETH EDWARDS SPALDING is Associate Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, where she teaches U.S. foreign policy and American government and directs CMC's Washington, D.C., program. The author of The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism, she has also contributed to several volumes on the presidency and American foreign policy and written for the Wilson Quarterly, the Journal of American History, Comparative Political Studies, and Presidential Studies Quarterly.