January 2012 meeting: "The Cold War"

In January 2012 we discussed The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis.

Here is the description of the book from the Barnes and Noble website:

The “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in its drama, The Cold War stands as a triumphant summation of the era that, more than any other, shaped our own.

Here are some posts on the book by one of our members:

• Thinking about the end of the Cold War
• Benefits of Size versus Benefits of Local Rule
• Gaddis' book, The Cold War