John Lewis Gaddis:Der Kalte Krieg: Eine neue Geschichte von John Lewis Gaddis (englisch) Taschenbuch Buch
- edizione con copertina flessibile ISBN: 9780143038276
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. by John Lewis Gaddis. Gaddis … Altro …
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. by John Lewis Gaddis. Gaddis is also the author of On Grand Strategy. The Nile on eBay FREE SHIPPING UK WIDE The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis Beginning with World War II and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the author provides a thrilling account of the strategic dynamics that drove the age. The work is rich with illuminating portraits of its major personalities and fresh insight into its most crucial events. FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description "Outstanding . . . The most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written." —The Boston Globe"Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject." —The New York TimesThe "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.Gaddis is also the author of On Grand Strategy. Author Biography John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History of Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, including On Grand Strategy, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972); Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security (1982); The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987); We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997); The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (2002); and Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (2004). Table of Contents The Cold WarPrefaceList of MapsPrologue: The View ForwardI. The Return Of FearII. Deathboats And LifeboatsIII. Command Versus SpontaneityIV. The Emergence Of AutonomyV. The Recovery Of EquityVI. ActorsVII. The Triumph Of HopeEpilogue: The View BackNotesBibliographyIndex Review "Outstanding . . . The most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written." —The Boston Globe"Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject." —The New York Times"A fresh and admirably concise history . . . Gaddis's mastery of the material, his fluent style and eye for the telling anecdote make his new work a pleasure." —The Economist Long Description 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. Review Quote Outstanding ... The most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written. ( The Boston Globe ) Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject. ( The New York Times ) A fresh and admirably concise history . . . Gaddis Excerpt from Book PROLOGUE THE VIEW FORWARD IN 1946 a forty-three-year-old Englishman named Eric Blair rented a house at the edge of the world--a house in which he expected to die. It was on the northern tip of the Scottish island of Jura, at the end of a dirt track, inaccessible by automobile, with no telephone or electricity. The nearest shop, the only one on the island, was some twenty-five miles to the south. Blair had reasons to want remoteness. Dejected by the recent death of his wife, he was suffering from tuberculosis and would soon begin coughing up blood. His country was reeling from the costs of a military victory that had brought neither security, nor prosperity, nor even the assurance that freedom would survive. Europe was dividing into two hostile camps, and the world seemed set to follow. With atomic bombs likely to be used, any new war would be apocalyptic. And he needed to finish a novel. Its title was 1984 , an inversion of the year in which he completed it, and it appeared in Great Britain and the United States in 1949 under Blair''s pen name, George Orwell. The reviews, the New York Times noted, were "overwhelmingly admiring," but "with cries of terror rising above the applause."1 This was hardly surprising because 1984 evoked an age, only three and a half decades distant, in which totalitarianism has triumphed everywhere. Individuality is smothered, along with law, ethics, creativity, linguistic clarity, honesty about history, and even love--apart, of course, from the love everyone is forced to feel for the Stalin-like dictator "Big Brother" and his counterparts, who run a world permanently at war. "If you want a picture of the future," Orwell''s hero Winston Smith is told, as he undergoes yet another session of relentless torture, "imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever."2 Orwell did die early in 1950--in a London hospital, not on his island--knowing only that his book had impressed and frightened its first readers. Subsequent readers responded similarly: 1984 became the single most compelling vision in the post-World War II era of what might follow it. As the real year 1984 approached, therefore, comparisons with Orwell''s imaginary year became inescapable. The world was not yet totalitarian, but dictators dominated large parts of it. The danger of war between the United States and the Soviet Union--two superpowers instead of the three Orwell had anticipated--seemed greater than it had for many years. And the apparently permanent conflict known as the "Cold War," which began while Orwell was still alive, showed not the slightest signs of ending. But then, on the evening of January 16, 1984, an actor Orwell would have recognized from his years as a film reviewer appeared on television in his more recent role as president of the United States. Ronald Reagan''s reputation until this moment had been that of an ardent Cold Warrior. Now, though, he envisaged a different future: Just suppose with me for a moment that an Ivan and an Anya could find themselves, say, in a waiting room, or sharing a shelter from the rain or a storm with a Jim and Sally, and that there was no language barrier to keep them from getting acquainted. Would they then deliberate the differences between their respective governments? Or would they find themselves comparing notes about their children and what each other did for a living? . . . They might even have decided that they were all going to get together for dinner some evening soon. Above all, they would have proven that people don''t make wars.3 It was an unexpectedly gentle invitation for human faces to prevail over boots, dictators, and the mechanisms of war. It set in motion, in Orwell''s year 1984, the sequence of events by which they would do so. Just over a year after Reagan''s speech, an ardent enemy of totalitarianism took power in the Soviet Union. Within six years, that country''s control over half of Europe had collapsed. Within eight, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--the country that had provoked Orwell''s great gloomy prophecy in the first place--had itself ceased to exist. These things did not happen simply because Reagan gave a speech or because Orwell wrote a book: the remainder of this book complicates the causation. It is worth starting with visions, though, because they establish hopes and fears. History then determines which prevail. CHAPTER ONE THE RETURN OF FEAR We waited for them to come ashore. We could see their faces. They looked like ordinary people. We had imagined something different. Well, they were Americans! --LIUBOVA KOZINCHENKA, Red Army, 58th Guards Division I guess we didn''t know what to expect from the Russians, but when you looked at them and examined them, you couldn''t tell whether, you know? If you put an American uniform on them, they could have been American! --AL ARONSON, U.S. Army, 69th Infantry Division1 THIS WAS THE WAY the war was supposed to end: with cheers, handshakes, dancing, drinking, and hope. The date was April 25, 1945, the place the eastern German city of Torgau on the Elbe, the event the first meeting of the armies, converging from opposite ends of the earth, that had cut Nazi Germany in two. Five days later Adolf Hitler blew his brains out beneath the rubble that was all that was left of Berlin. Just over a week after that, the Germans surrendered unconditionally. The leaders of the victorious Grand Alliance, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin, had already exchanged their own handshakes, toasts, and hopes for a better world at two wartime summits--Teheran in November, 1943, and Yalta in February, 1945. These gestures would have meant little, though, had the troops they commanded not been able to stage their own more boisterous celebration where it really counted: on the front lines of a battlefield from which the enemy was now disappearin, [PU: Penguin Books]<
