Cold wars and proxy conflicts Books

Book Synopsis'A heart-piercingly brilliant book about a woman whose personal life put her in the cross-hairs of history' HADLEY FREEMAN'Totally riveting. I couldn't put it down' VICTORIA HISLOP'Ethel sings out for all women who have been misunderstood and wronged, and refuse to bow down' NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE'A shocking tale of betrayal, naivety, misogyny and judicial failure' SONIA PURNELL'A historic miscarriage of justice laid bare for our times' PHILIPPE SANDSEthel Rosenberg was a supportive wife, loving mother to two small children and courageous idealist who grew up during the Depression with aspirations to become an opera singer.On 19 June 1953 she became the first woman in the US to be executed for a crime other than murder. She was thirty-seven years old.Ethel's conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union followed what FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the 'trial of the century' in Cold War America and is still controversial. Now, Anne Sebba's masterly, meticulously researched and deeply moving biography finally tells Ethel's true story - a life barbarically cut short on the basis of tainted evidence for a crime she almost certainly did not commit.Trade ReviewA heart-piercingly brilliant book about a woman whose personal life put her in the cross-hairs of history -- HADLEY FREEMANSebba gets her readers under the skin of both Ethel and her era so effectively that this shameful saga had me alternately close to tears and boiling with rage * DAILY TELEGRAPH *An intelligent, sensitive and absorbing account of the short, tragic life of a woman made remarkable by circumstance. [Ethel] emerges as a stubbornly courageous figure, a woman who towers above the parade of morally grubby, self-seeking and misogynistic figures who conspired to destroy her -- Melissa Benn * GUARDIAN *Totally riveting. I couldn't put it down -- VICTORIA HISLOPPowerful . . . her narrative clings to the reader like ivy . . . a feat of empathy * OBSERVER *Masterful, original and painfully gripping, a historic miscarriage of justice laid bare for our times -- PHILIPPE SANDSAn engaging portrait of the woman at the centre of a shameful case in US history * Guardian *An almost unbearably terrible story. I was completely held, absorbed and involved with the story of Ethel's short life. Brilliant ... could not be bettered -- CLAIRE TOMALINAnne Sebba's riveting reappraisal not only includes previously unseen letters and testimony but also manages to extract Ethel from her marriage . . . this important and compelling book raises resonant issues around what happens when collective fear leads to hysteria and justice is wilfully ignored * SPECTATOR *Timely, superbly written and ultimately devastating, this is an American tragedy indeed. I don't think I've ever read a book that has moved me more -- ANTHONY HOROWITZAbsolutely gripping in so many ways; beautifully written and superbly researched, a brilliant and a fresh take on a famous case. This is simultaneously a Shakespearean tragedy of a woman and family betrayal, a history of American Communism and Soviet espionage in the USA, a very modern story with links to the 21st century and Trump, a web of conspiracies, politics and witch-hunts, and an investigation of treason and justice -- SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIOREA tragic and gripping tale, scrupulously documented, of political chicanery, family betrayal and legal perfidy, Anne's Sebba's book has unnerving echoes in the modern world -- CAROLINE MOOREHEADThis is a magnificent book, one with a hundred strands, woven together with such skill that the only thought one can have at the end of reading is: how did we never know the true story of this remarkable woman? -- CARMEN CALLILWas Ethel innocent? Anne Sebba, a masterful storyteller, peels away the layers of historical and sometimes deliberate misinformation to reveal the extraordinary truth. This book will haunt me for some time -- ANITA ANANDA riveting account of "the Dreyfus case of Cold-War America". Ethel Rosenberg's execution in 1953 united the Pope, Einstein and Picasso in condemning her conviction as both a crime against humanity and an assault on America's idea of itself. As Sebba shows to scathing effect, with a message that will strike contemporary nerves, Ethel placed truth above fake news, and being a good wife and mother above being a good Communist. She had wanted to be an opera singer, but here she sings out for all women who have been misunderstood and wronged, and refuse to bow down -- NICHOLAS SHAKESPEAREWhat a soaring story that challenges on so many levels! Anne Sebba has an uncanny knack of upending historical orthodoxies in compelling style. In this gripping account of Ethel Rosenberg's life and death, she does so again. It's a shocking tale of betrayal, naivety, misogyny and judicial failure. As a woman who maybe loved too well, Ethel remains hard to like, but she's even harder to condemn -- SONIA PURNELLAnne Sebba's Ethel Rosenberg is a tour de force, a tale of a woman betrayed and executed. Sebba's painstaking research creates a new picture of a woman caught up in accusations, an activist, a devoted mother sent to the electric chair, a tale of idealism and government's demand for a scapegoat, a moving, fascinating picture of the first woman to be executed in the US for espionage. 'Always remember we are innocent', she said as she died. For years, Ethel Rosenberg has been attacked and castigated. Now Sebba's new access to sources and research tells her real story - of a loyal wife, a woman of principle who became public enemy no 1 for a terrified political class and public - and asks us to make up our own minds -- KATE WILLIAMSIn Anne Sebba, Ethel Rosenberg has found the ideal biographer, sympathetic without being blind to her faults and a sure understanding of the period. Her portrayal is compelling . . . it is impossible to read her account of Ethel's last days without being moved * LITERARY REVIEW *Seventy years on Anne Sebba has given Ethel Rosenberg a towering memorial * THE CRITIC *Anne Sebba's brilliant, unforgettable biography is the story of a woman who fell victim to a fatal cocktail of prejudices - anti-Communism, antisemitism and misogyny * THE JEWISH CHRONICLE *A compelling story of love, betrayal, misplaced idealism, and brutal and legal political manoeuvring * ECONOMIST *Anne Sebba has written a powerful biography of a wife, mother and woman, caught by a system determined to make an example of her and betrayed by those she thought she could trust * THE OLDIE *An absorbing book * THE TABLET *Sebba's impassioned investigation into this shameful saga concludes that this remarkable woman became a "human sacrifice" to Red Scare hysteria and 1950s chauvinism * DAILY TELEGRAPH *Riveting . . . A concise yet thorough account of a 1953 miscarriage of justice with alarming relevance today * Kirkus *This shattering story of a courageous woman swept up in one of America's greatest miscarriages of justice is enthralling and deeply moving. With her usual brilliance, Anne Sebba has brought to light the real person buried under decades of propaganda and has finally succeeded in humanising Ethel Rosenberg. This book is hugely relevant today, it shows us the perils of allowing ideology and hysteria to take precedence over justice. This is a magnificent work, meticulously researched and skilfully crafted -- ARIANA NEUMANN, author of New York Times bestseller 'When Time Stopped'A gripping tale of betrayal, deceit and judicial incompetence * BBC History Magazine *Sebba's painstaking research pulls back the veil of historic projections * Financial Times *Sebba gets her readers under the skin of both Ethel and her era so effectively that this shameful saga had me alternately close to tears and boiling with rage * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisA Times History Book of the Year 2022From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily TelegraphThe 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.Max Hastings's graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev's Russia and Kennedy's America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieTrade Review PRAISE FOR ABYSS: ‘Grabs from the get-go… as if this were the very best fiction’ Daily Mail ‘A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling reassessment of the most perilous moment in history’ Daily Telegraph ‘Frightening but hopelessly addictive’ The Times ‘Magisterial… chilling’Daily Express ‘Brilliantly told… compelling… Hastings has cleverly woven the story together from all sides describing them in dramatic, almost hour by hour detail… this is a scary book. Hastings sees little evidence that today’s leaders understand each other any better than they did in 1962’ Sunday Times ‘Deeply researched, incisively intelligent and compulsively readable. Abyss is as tight and smart account as any account and will earn pride of place even on a shelf already packed with books about the crisis’ TLS ‘A gripping retelling of those weeks of brinkmanship, reckless gambles, gung-ho generals and a thuggish USSR leader bullying a ‘weak president’’ Sun ‘Superb… reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana’ Daily Mail ‘Hastings lays bare, with chilling clarity, the ease with which political theatre and bluster could well have escalated into a scenario of mutually assured destruction’ Observer

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Book SynopsisA Times History Book of the Year 2022From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily TelegraphThe 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.Max Hastings's graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev's Russia and Kennedy's America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.To contend with today's threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.Trade Review PRAISE FOR ABYSS: ‘Grabs from the get-go… as if this were the very best fiction’ Daily Mail ‘A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history’ Daily Telegraph ‘Frightening but hopelessly addictive’ The Times ‘Magisterial… chilling’Daily Express ‘Brilliantly told… compelling… Hastings has cleverly woven the story together from all sides describing them in dramatic, almost hour by hour detail… this is a scary book. Hastings sees little evidence that today’s leaders understand each other any better than they did in 1962’ Sunday Times ‘Deeply researched, incisively intelligent and compulsively readable. Abyss is as tight and smart account as any account and will earn pride of place even on a shelf already packed with books about the crisis’ TLS ‘A gripping retelling of those weeks of brinkmanship, reckless gambles, gung-ho generals and a thuggish USSR leader bullying a ‘weak president’’ Sun ‘Superb… reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana’ Daily Mail ‘Hastings lays bare, with chilling clarity, the ease with which political theatre and bluster could well have escalated into a scenario of mutually assured destruction’ Observer

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Book SynopsisThrilling High-definition history: tight, thrilling and beautifully researched' SUNDAY TIMESThis book is a triumph' DAN SNOW9.07 a.m., April 12, 1961. A top-secret rocket site in the USSR. A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union's most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead and blasts into the skies. His name is Yuri Gagarin and he is about to make history.Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour ten times faster than a rifle bullet Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity the first human to leave the planet.Beyond tells the thrilling story behind that epic flight on its sixtieth anniversary. It happened at the height of the Cold War as the US and USSR confronted each other across an Iron Curtain. Both superpowers took enormous risks to get a man into space first the Americans in the full gTrade Review‘This book is a triumph’Dan Snow ‘Just a wonderful book, I can’t recommend it enough’Giles Coren ‘The thrilling story … is not the first study of Gagarin and the Vostok missions, still less of Nasa’s “Mercury Seven” astronauts — but bringing the two stories together is a masterstroke … It is high-definition history: tight, thrilling and beautifully researched’Sunday Times ‘Many intriguing revelations [and an] extensive, blow-by-blow account of the race to put a human in space … Tells the full story of the finest two hours of [Gagarin's] tragically short life’Literary Review ‘Thrilling … brings a huge amount that is fresh and new to our understanding of the Space Race’Daily Telegraph ‘Cinematic … Walker develops a colourful sense of the political theatre of space exploration’Spectator ‘Scintillating …The thrilling ride to be the first man in space is vividly captured in this retelling of Russia’s favourite son’Financial Times ‘A gripping story, rich in novelistic detail … Highly recommended’BBC Sky at Night, five stars ‘Brings to life the space race and the extraordinary story of Yuri Gagarin … A history that reads like a thriller’Anne Applebaum ‘The very best account of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering space mission – vivid, thoughtful, and respectful … A wonderfully rendered story of an epochal event’Asif Siddiqi ‘The exhilaration of a fine thriller’Colin Thubron ‘Suddenly, every previous biography of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and his epic Earth-orbiting flight has been superseded … A spellbinding and completely authoritative account … The finest, best researched book ever written on the subject’Colin Burgess ‘Dramatic and dynamic. Stephen Walker’s passion for his subject along with his exceptional research and attention to detail have brought my father’s extraordinary journey vividly to life’Elena Gagarina, daughter of Yuri Gagarin

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Book Synopsis''We thought we had lived through the terror of a nuclear war, but something far more ominous was brewing in the Soviet Union - a biological Armageddon from which no one would escape. Dr Alibek has emerged from the world''s deadliest labs to tell a story that is as important as it is chilling. Sometimes the truth is far worse than fiction. No one can afford not to read this book.'' Robin Cook ''As the top scientist in the Soviet Union''s biowarfare program and the inventor of the world''s most powerful anthrax, Dr Ken Alibek has stunned the highest levels of the U.S. government with his revelations. Now, in a calm, compelling, utterly convincing voice, he tells the world what he knows. Modern biology is producing weapons that in killing power may exceed the hydrogen bomb. Ken Alibek describes them with the intimate knowledge of a top weaponeer.'' Richard PrestTrade ReviewIn the West Alibek has been shocked by the flippancy and the alarming level of complaceny regarding biological weapons. He felt it was his duty to try to dispel such ignorance. By writing this book he has succeeded brilliantly in achieving this aim. * Literary Review *For those . who thought we were crying wolf when we tried to tell you that there really was a Soviet biological weapons programme that threatened our security, this book will make uncomfortable reading. * New Scientist *

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Book SynopsisCommand and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a missile silo in rural Arkansas, where a single crew struggled to prevent the explosion of the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States, with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort to ensure that nuclear weapons can''t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with men who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view.Trade ReviewSo damnably readable. It drives the vision of a world trembling on the edge of a fatal precipice deep into your mind ... a piece of work of the deepest import, with the multilayered density of an ambitiously conceived novel -- John Lloyd * Financial Times *Do you really want to read about the thermonuclear warheads that are still aimed at the city where you live? Do you really need to know about the appalling security issues that have dogged nuclear weapons in the 70 years since their invention? Yes, you do. In Schlosser's hands it is a reading treat ... he's a natural genius -- Jonathan Franzen * Guardian, Books of the Year *Part techno-thriller, part careful historical investigation ... beautifully written and impressively researched -- Gerard DeGroot * Daily Telegraph *Brilliant, gripping, chilling -- Steven Shapin * London Review of Books *The author of Fast Food Nation does for the American nuclear industry what he did for industrial food production * Economist, Books of the Year *Eric Schlosser detonates a truth bomb in Command and Control * Vanity Fair *Deeply reported, deeply frightening . . . a techno-thriller of the first order * Los Angeles Times *An excellent journalistic investigation of the efforts made since the first atomic bomb was exploded, outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, to put some kind of harness on nuclear weaponry. By a miracle of information management, Schlosser has synthesized a huge archive of material, including government reports, scientific papers, and a substantial historical and polemical literature on nukes, and transformed it into a crisp narrative covering more than fifty years of scientific and political change. And he has interwoven that narrative with a hair-raising, minute-by-minute account of an accident at a Titan II missile silo in Arkansas, in 1980, which he renders in the manner of a techno-thriller . . . Command and Control is how nonfiction should be written -- Louis Menand * The New Yorker *A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. . . . fascinating -- Lev Grossman * Time *Command and Control ranks among the most nightmarish books written in recent years; and in that crowded company it bids fair to stand at the summit. It is the more horrific for being so incontrovertibly right and so damnably readable. Page after relentless page, it drives the vision of a world trembling on the edge of a fatal precipice deep into your reluctant mind . . . a work with the multilayered density of an ambitiously conceived novel . . . Schlosser has done what journalism does at its best when at full stretch: he has spent time - years - researching, interviewing, understanding and reflecting to give us a piece of work of the deepest import * Financial Times *Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety . . . The story of the missile silo accident unfolds with the pacing, thrill and techno details of an episode of 24 * San Francisco Chronicle *Disquieting but riveting . . . fascinating . . . Schlosser's readers (and he deserves a great many) will be struck by how frequently the people he cites attribute the absence of accidental explosions and nuclear war to divine intervention or sheer luck rather than to human wisdom and skill. Whatever was responsible, we will clearly need many more of it in the years to come * New York Times Book Review *Easily the most unsettling work of nonfiction I've ever read, Schlosser's six-year investigation of America's 'broken arrows' (nuclear weapons mishaps) is by and large historical-this stuff is top secret, after all-but the book is beyond relevant. It's critical reading in a nation with thousands of nukes still on hair-trigger alert . . . Command and Control reads like a character-driven thriller as Schlosser draws on his deep reporting, extensive interviews, and documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act to demonstrate how human error, computer glitches, dilution of authority, poor communications, occasional incompetence, and the routine hoarding of crucial information have nearly brought about our worst nightmare on numerous occasions * Mother Jones *A powerful mix of history, politics, and technology, told with impressive authority * Independent *Eric Schlosser brings the investigative rigour of his big hit Fast Food Nation to this overview of our global nuclear arsenal * Herald *

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Book SynopsisFrom the master of spy thrillers, John le Carré''s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a gripping story of love and betrayal at the height of the Cold War. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an afterword by the author and an introduction by William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart.Alec Leamas is tired. It''s the 1960s, he''s been out in the cold for years, spying in the shadow of the Berlin Wall for his British masters. He has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last - but only after one final assignment. He must travel deep into the heart of Communist Germany and betray his country, a job that he will do with his usual cynical professionalism. But when George Smiley tries to help a young woman Leamas has befriended, Leamas''s mission may prove to be the worst thing he could ever have done. In le Carré''s breakthrough work of 1963, the spy story is reborn as a gritty and terrible tale of men who are caught up in politics beyond their imagining. ''A portrait of a man who has lived by lies and subterfuge for so long, he''s forgotten how to tell the truth'' Time''He can communicate emotion, from sweating fear to despairing love, with terse and compassionate conviction. Above all, he can tell a tale'' Sunday TimesTrade ReviewSuperbly constructed, with an atmosphere of chilly hell -- J.B. PriestleyThe best spy story I have ever read -- Graham GreeneThe master storyteller ... has lost none of his cunning -- A. N. WilsonI have re-read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold over and over again since I first encountered it in my teens, just to remind myself how extraordinary a work of fiction can be. * Malcolm Gladwell *One of those very rare novels that changes the way you look at the world. Unflinching, highly sophisticated, superb. * William Boyd *

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Book SynopsisThe eighth of John le Carré''s espionage novels to feature his most enduring and well-loved character, George Smiley, and a gripping feat of narrative brilliance, The Secret Pilgrim is published in Penguin Modern Classics with an afterword by the author.The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks the truth - perhaps the last the students will ever hear. As they listen, Ned recalls his own painful triumphs and inglorious failures, in a career that took him from the Western Isles of Scotland to Hamburg and from Israel to Cambodia. He asks himself: Did it do any good? What did it do to me? And what will happen to us now? In this late Smiley novel, the great spy gives his own humane and unexpected answers.If you enjoyed The Secret Pilgrim, you might like le Carré''s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold,

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Book SynopsisAfter The Second World War, the author was exiled for many years from his home country of Poland. In this book, he evokes that homeland and his years away from it; how it nurtured him and how its divisions and destruction shaped a generation.

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Book Synopsis''Everything about this story is astounding'' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday TimesTrinity was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Trinity is now also the extraordinary story of the bomb''s metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR.Against the background of pre-war Nazi Germany, the Second World War and the following Cold War, the book traces how Peierls brought Fuchs into his family and his laboratory, only to be betrayed. It describes in unprecedented detail how Fuchs became a spy, his motivations and the information he passed to his Soviet contacts, both in the UK and after he went with Peierls to join the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1944. Frank Close is himself a distinguished nuclear physicist: uniquely, the book explains the science as well as the spying.Fuchs returned toTrade ReviewA masterclass in thriller writing, it bears comparison with the most gripping spy sagas of Ben Macintyre -- Graham Farmelo * Guardian *A brilliant new biography ... The book introduces crucial changes to ... the official version of events. -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times *Engrossing, brilliantly researched ... The scale of Fuchs's spying was astounding, as were its consequences -- Jay Elwes * Spectator *He has delved into the archives to produce a remarkable story ... meticulous but highly readable -- Manjit Kumar * The Times *

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Book Synopsis''A fascinating and timely account of the current crisis in the relationship between Russia and the United States'' Daniel Beer, The New York Times''Could not be more timely ... crucial reading for anyone interested in what''s happening inside Putin''s head'' Oliver Bullough, ProspectA revelatory, behind-the-scenes account of Russian-American relations, from a former US ambassador and ''Obama''s top White House advisor on Russia policy'' (The New York Times)In 2008, when Michael McFaul was asked to leave his perch at Stanford and join President-elect Barack Obama''s national security team, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today''s most contentious international relationships. McFaul had been studying and visiting Russia for decades, becoming one of America''s preeminent scholars on the country during the first Putin era.During President Obama''s fTrade ReviewMike McFaul gives us a broad, thoughtful analysis of a critical shift in world affairs. Read From Cold War to Hot Peace for timely, informative, and intriguing insights on changing US-Russia relations. -- George P. Shultz, former Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan (1982-1989)As both a first-hand observer and a key participant in many of the recent events that have shaped US-Russia relations, Ambassador McFaul has an important story to tell. From Cold War to Hot Peace is a gripping and intensely personal account of one of the most complex and consequential geopolitical developments of our time. -- Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton (1997-2001)Mike McFaul has lived history. In this terrific book, he recounts a pivotal time in U.S.-Russian relations, bringing the perspective of a central participant and one of America's finest scholars of Russian politics. This book will be valued by students, experts, historians and diplomats for years to come -- Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush (2005-2009)This is an indispensable book. McFaul is a candid and insightful guide to the history, personalities, and politics that continue to shape one of America's most consequential relationships -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Secretary of State under Barack Obama (2009-2013)Careful about providing evidence for his hard-earned opinions, the Stanford professor is always clear and successfully assesses the level of complexity we lay-readers need to understand academic theories about revolutions and economics... Persuasive and convincing * Christian Science Monitor *Michael McFaul left his posting as the US ambassador in Moscow in February 2014, as the Russian annexation of the Crimea inaugurated the worst crisis in the East-West relations in generation. In this thoughtful and clearly written account McFaul, one of the architects of President Obama's "reset" policy vis-à-vis Moscow, provides a unique insight in the chain of events that ended the new 'détente" and put the two nuclear superpowers on the brink of a new Cold War. This is a must read for everyone who wants to understand contemporary Russia and the dangerous world we live in today. -- Serhii Plokhy, Harvard University, author of Chernobyl: History of a TragedyImpressive... a candid expert account ... McFaul is a senior policymaker both hugely knowledgeable about and admiring of Russia ... Essential reading * Financial Times *McFaul's lively memoir is an up-close account of how Washington tried to find common ground with a Kremlin crippled by suspicion... McFaul comes at Putin from a special corner: as a boyish enthusiast for engagement with Russia. [...] As a young academic he was hungry to know about how the Soviet Union was going to break up. As an evangelist for democratic change he made contact with dissidents. And then, as special assistant to the president and ambassador, he was behind Barack Obama's 'reset' of relations with Russia * The Times *McFaul sheds needed light on the most geopolitically competitive relationship of the last 75 years * Guardian *Vigorously argued...McFaul's contribution to the debate is significant, based on his experience as a political practitioner as well as an academic analyst * Washington Post *An invaluable memoir -- David RemnickMcFaul provides useful insights into the changing relationship between America and Russia in this smart, personable mix of memoir and political analysis... an essential volume for those trying to understand one of the U.S.'s most significant current rivals * Publisher's Weekly *Of interest to observers of the unfolding constitutional crisis as well as of Russia's place in the international order * Kirkus *In From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia, Michael McFaul examines how U.S.-Russia relations have evolved since 1989. He draws on history as well as the unique perspective he gained while serving as an ambassador. Given what's going on in the world, this book couldn't be more timely * Bustle *An engaging, well-penned account of McFaul's days in Moscow * MacLeans *

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Book SynopsisThe second sensational volume of ''One of the biggest intelligence coups in recent years'' (The Times)When Vasili Mitrokhin revealed his archive of Russian intelligence material to the world it caused an international sensation. The Mitrokhin Archive II reveals in full the secrets of this remarkable cache, showing for the first time the astonishing extent of the KGB''s global power and influence. ''The long-awaited second tranche from the KGB archive ... co-authored by our leading authority on the secret machinations of the Evil Empire'' Sunday Times''Stunning ... the stuff of legend ... a unique insight into KGB activities on a global scale'' Spectator''Headline news ... as great a credit to the scholarship of its author as to the dedication and courage of its originator'' Sunday Telegraph''There are gems on every page'' Financial Times

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Book SynopsisDespite--or because of--its huge popular culture status, Peanuts enabled cartoonist Charles Schulz to offer political commentary on the most controversial topics of postwar American culture through the voices of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts gang.In postwar America, there was no newspaper comic strip more recognizable than Charles Schulz''s Peanuts. It was everywhere, not just in thousands of daily newspapers. For nearly fifty years, Peanuts was a mainstay of American popular culture in television, movies, and merchandising, from the Macy''s Thanksgiving Day Parade to the White House to the breakfast table.Most people have come to associate Peanuts with the innocence of childhood, not the social and political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s. Some have even argued that Peanuts was so beloved because it was apolitical. The truth, as Blake Scott Ball shows, is that Peanuts was very political. Whether it was the battles over the Vietnam War, racial integration, feminism, or the future of a nuclear world, Peanuts was a daily conversation about very real hopes and fears and the political realities of the Cold War world. As thousands of fan letters, interviews, and behind-the-scenes documents reveal, Charles Schulz used his comic strip to project his ideas to a mass audience and comment on the rapidly changing politics of America.Charlie Brown''s America covers all of these debates and much more in a historical journey through the tumultuous decades of the Cold War as seen through the eyes of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Peppermint Patty, Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang.Trade ReviewBall has offered a wonderful lens through which to understand not only how Schulz's Christian faith and mildly liberal bent generated a beloved comic strip but also how the life and times of an angst-ridden boy named Charlie Brown and his motley group of friends mirrored the contours of postwar American political culture....Historians of twentieth-century political culture will find much to like about Ball's analysis...of Schulz's comic strip, one that invited readers such as Reagan to project their own political anxieties and concerns onto the lives of minimally sketched cartoon kids. * Robert Genter, Journal of American History *Ball makes a strong case that the world's foremost comic strip was very political, despite common belief to the contrary, its messages deftly shrouded in allegory, ambiguousness, and intentional vagueness by Charles Schulz ... this excellent book provides abundant new material and many fascinating insights. * J. A. Lent, CHOICE *This is a comics studies book that your parents and non-comics friends would also enjoy. Charlie Brown's America is mostly jargon-free and is a fun, fast read. It reprints a substantial number of Peanuts comics and Peanuts-related images, and these entertain readers and help illustrate Ball's ideas. This is an excellent example of how to write good history that a general audience will enjoy reading!.... One of the most impressive elements of Charlie Brown's America is how it presents Charles Schulz as a deeply thoughtful person and then shows how that translates into his work. Ball really does complicate the legacy of Schulz and Peanuts, but he does so in a way that enriches the strip and helps to firmly ground the seemingly timeless Peanuts gang in cold war America....Charlie Brown's America serves up nostalgia, makes you smile, and still manages to make you rethink and reconsider Peanuts and its legacy. * Dan Newland, The Comic Book Yeti *It's enlightening to read Ball's breakdown of where the strip captured the moment and where it strayed. * Heather Seggel, Progressive Populist *Peanuts reflects America, or America reflects Peanuts. Both were true in the case of America's favorite comic strip. For half a century Charles Schulz sent his missive out to the world in a love letter, and his readers loved him back with unparalleled affection. In this thoroughly researched and carefully considered study, Blake Scott Ball explores the reasons why Schulz may have been our best cartoonist. Like Mickey Mouse, Superman, and Chaplin's tramp, Charlie Brown has joined our list of icons who help us understand the human condition. He's a good man, Charlie Brown. * M. Thomas Inge, Randolph-Macon College *Blake Scott Ball's Charlie Brown's America uses the history of Charles Schulz's Peanuts as a medium for his fascinating tour of cold war American culture. * Grace Hale, University of Virginia *This valuable study provides essential context for our understanding of a pop-cultural masterpiece. Charles Schulz generally avoided making overt political statements in his comics. But as Blake Ball demonstrates, that doesn't mean that Peanuts was never a political text. In fact, Schulz cultivated a deliberately ambiguous, even polysemic approach when addressing the most hot-button issues of his day—from Women's Liberation to Civil Rights and Environmentalism. * Ben Saunders, University of Oregon *A cultural history with the narrative drive of a well-crafted biography, Blake Scott Ball's Charlie Brown's America unlocks the mysteries behind Schulz's comic masterpiece. Drawing on interviews, speeches, and correspondence between the cartoonist and his fans, Ball offers deftly historicized close readings of Schulz's strip, showing how Peanuts' ideological flexibility made it a 'Rorschach test' for American readers during the Cold War. A tour de force of comics scholarship and an engrossing read! * Philip Nel, author of Was the Cat in the Hat Black? *The book succeeds nicely as both a fresh treatment of Schulz's work and career and as a survey of popular political currents in the mid-twentieth century United States... [It] will interest scholars of mid-twentieth-century cultural history as well as fans and students of comics, comedy, and popular culture. * Kerry Soper, American Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Ch 1 Bless You for Charlie Brown: Evangelicalism, Civil Religion, and Peanuts in Postwar America Ch 2 Crosshatch Is Beautiful: Franklin, Color-Blindness, and the Limits of Racial Integration in Peanuts Ch 3 Snoopy Is the Hero in Vietnam: Ambivalence, Empathy, and Peanuts' Vietnam War Ch 4 I Believe in Conserving Energy: Personal Responsibility, Consumer Politics, and Peanuts' Pro-Capitalist Environmental Ethos Ch 5 I Have a Vision, Charlie Brown: Gender Roles, Abortion Rights, Sex Education, and Peanuts in the Age of the Women's Movement Conclusion Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA polished and masterly work of historical narrative, The Marshall Plan is an instant classic of Cold War literature.With Britain''s empire collapsing and Stalin''s ascendant, U.S. officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.This is the story behind the birth of the Cold War, and the U.S.-led liberal global order, told with verve, insight, and resonance for today. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Benn Steil''s book will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan.Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Steil''s gripping narratTable of Contents1: Prologue 2: Crisis 3: Rupture 4: Plan 5: Trap 6: Unity 7: Persuasion 8: Sausage 9: Subversion 10: Passage 11: Showdown 12: Division 13: Success? 14: Echoes Cast of Characters Appendices Notes

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Book SynopsisThis is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.Across Europe, people are deeply concerned about the state of democracy. The Rise and Fall of the People''s Parties shifts the attention away from ever-changing populist politicians that capture newspaper headlines to the centre-left and centre-right people''s parties that used to buttress the democratic order over the past decades, but which are now in steep decline. Why does the crisis of these parties contribute so profoundly to today''s crisis of democracy? And why were these parties so important for the stabilization and legitimation of democracy in the past century in the first place?By providing a long-term and transnational account of the history of democracy in modern Europe, The Rise and Fall of the People''s Parties reveals the striking parallels between the hist

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Book SynopsisDean Acheson was one of the most influential Secretaries of State in U.S. history, presiding over American foreign policy during a pivotal era--the decade after World War II when the American Century slipped into high gear. During his vastly influential career, Acheson spearheaded the greatest foreign policy achievements in modern times, ranging from the Marshall Plan to the establishment of NATO. In this acclaimed biography, Robert L. Beisner paints an indelible portrait of one of the key figures of the last half-century. In a book filled with insight based on research in government archives, memoirs, letters, and diaries, Beisner illuminates Acheson''s major triumphs, including the highly underrated achievement of converting West Germany and Japan from mortal enemies to prized allies, and does not shy away from examining his missteps. But underlying all his actions, Beisner shows, was a tough-minded determination to outmatch the strength of the Soviet bloc--indeed, to defeat the SovTrade Review...a mature and lively account of the activities of the Secretary of State... * S.R. Dockrill The English Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Acknowledgments Definitions of Acronyms and Abbreviations 1: Introduction: "The Shiniest Fish that Ever Came Out of the Sea" Part I 2: Rare Meat: Adding Reach to Power 3: Patterns of Peril: Joining the Cold Warriors 4: Rome and Carthage: The Truman Doctrine 5: The Marshall Plan and the Return to Private Life Part II 6: The Inner and Outer Acheson 7: Acheson, the President, and the State Department 8: Keeping the Americans In, the Russians Out, and the Germans Down, 1949 9: Strategy in Europe: Backing the West, Probing the East 10: Looking for Chance in China, 1949 11: Neither Wood nor Ivory: Checkmated in China, 1949-1950 12: Other Early Encounters with Asia and the Middle East Part III 13: Weapons: The H-Bomb 14: Words: NSC-68, Public Opinion, and Total Diplomacy 15: Real Diplomacy, in Europe, 1949-1950 16: Plunge into the Unkown: The United States, Indochina, and China on the Eve of the Korean War 17: Friends in Place: Acheson and Alger Hiss 18: Evil Days Part IV 19: Testing Ground-Korea 20: In the Cockpit 21: Prodding Evolution with Action: German Rearmament 22: Acceleration from a Running Start Part V 23: In Thrall: Ironic Failures in Korea 24: Job's Comforter and the Mad Satrap 25: Captives of War 26: At Different Ends of the Triangle: Domestic Debates, European Armies, British Allies Part VI 27: Command in Japan 28: Failure in Indochina and China 29: Razor Edge Sensibilities: ANZUS and India 30: Falling between Two Stools: The Middle East, North Africa, and Africa 31: Picking Up Sticks in Egypt and Iran 32: Jousting with Mosadeq, Waiting for Nasser 33: Latin America: Critical, but not Serious Part VII 34: Lisbon to Letdown: The Fate of the EDC 35: Apples of Discord: Germany and the Soviet Union, 1952 36: Scope for the Exercise of Every Vital Power

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Book SynopsisThe Global Sixties are well known as a period of non-conformist lifestyles, experimentation with consumer products and technology, counterculture, and leftist politics. While the period has been well studied in the West and increasingly researched for the Global South, young people in the Second World too were active participants in these movements. The Iron Curtain was hardly a barrier against outside influences, and young people from students and hippies to mainstream youth in miniskirts and blue jeans saw themselves as part of the global community of like-minded people as well as citizens of Eastern Bloc countries. Drawing on Polish youth magazines, rural people''s diaries, sex education manuals, and personal testimonies, Malgorzata Fidelis follows jazz lovers, university students, hippies, and young rural rebels. Fidelis colorfully narrates their everyday engagement with a dynamically changing world, from popular media and consumption to counterculture and protest movements. She delineates their anti-authoritarian solidarities and competing visions of transnationalism, with the West as well as the ruling communist regime. Even as youth demonstrations were violently suppressed, Fidelis shows, youth culture was not. By the early 1970s, the state incorporated elements of Sixties culture into their official vision of socialist modernity.From the perspective of youth, Malgorzata Fidelis argues, the post-1989 transition in Poland from communism to liberal democracy, often dubbed as the return to Europe, was less of a breakthrough and more of a continuation of trends in which they participated. Indeed, they had already created new modes of self-expression and cultural spaces in which ideas of alternative social and political organization became imaginable.Trade ReviewAll too often, the countries of the former Soviet bloc are depicted as isolated lands of totalitarian oppression, locked away until they could rejoin the flow of global history after 1989. As Małgorzata Fidelis persuasively argues, nothing could be further from the truth. This fascinating study of youth culture in the 1960s places Poland in a truly global context, showing that the tumultuous events of that decade were more complicated and multifaceted than we ever imagined. This book is mandatory reading for anyone interested in the cultural or social history of the Cold War era, East or West. * Brian Porter-Szűcs, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom *In this exciting and groundbreaking study, Malgorzata Fidelis breaches the analytic Iron Curtain separating sixties youth revolts in East and West, writing the Polish Sixties into the global history of which they were a part. Impressive in breadth and detail, this indispensable book belongs on every global 1960s reading list. * Timothy Scott Brown, Northeastern University *Imagining the World represents a long overdue and much needed endeavor to write Eastern Europe into the history of the global 1960s. Malgorzata Fidelis does so with verve, conviction, and scholarly rigor, taking the reader across the entirety of Poland's social landscape. We learn about urban bohemians as well as rural rebels. We delve into the lofty dreams and unabashed internationalism of Poland's hippie community. And we witness how authorities attempt to domesticate the wild and unregulated transnationalism of the era by forcing it into the new framework of consumer socialism. By the time the journey ends in the mid-1970s, it has become more than evident that global counterculture did not stop at the Iron Curtain. Indeed, the implication is that if the world had paid more attention to youth culture(s), the collapse of socialism in Europe should not have come as such a surprise. * Juliane Fürst, author of Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland *The lessons provided by Fidelis's book are extremely important. * Johana Klusek, Europe-Asia Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Poland and the Global Sixties Chapter 1: The Polish Thaw: Youth Carnival, Domestic Revolution, and Cross-Border Encounters Chapter 2: Youth as Modernity: Envisioning Young People after the Thaw Chapter 3: Window to the World: Youth Magazines and the Politics of Apolitics Chapter 4: Bohemians and Discontents: The Making of a Student Community Chapter 5: Tensions of Transnationalism: Youth Rebellion, State Backlash, and 1968 Chapter 6: Counterculture: Hippies, Artists, and Other Subversives Chapter 7: The World in the Village: Rural Rebels in Search of Modernity Chapter 8: Domesticating the Sixties: Youth Culture, Globalization, and Consumer Socialism in the 1970s Conclusion: Imagining the World After the Sixties Notes Selected Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDrive critical, engaged learning and advanced skills development. Enabling comprehensive, rounded understanding, the student-centred approach actively develops the sophisticated skills key to performance in Paper 2. Developed directly with the IB for the 2015 syllabus, this Course Book fully supports the new comparative approach to learning.Cover the new syllabus in the right level of depth, with rich, thorough subject content.Developed directly with the IB, with the most comprehensive support for the new syllabus with complete support for the comparative approach.Truly engage learners with topical, relevant material that convincingly connects learning with the modern, global world.Streamline your planning, with a clear and thorough structure helping you logically progress through the syllabus.Build the advanced-level skills learners need for Paper 2, with the student-led approach driving active skills development and strengthening exam performance.Integrate approaches to learning with ATLs like thinking, communication, research and social skills built directly into learning.Help learners think critically about improving performance with extensive examiner insight and samples based on the latest exam format.This pack includes one print Course Book and one online Course Book. The online Course Book will be available on Oxford Education Bookshelf until 2023. Access is facilitated via a unique code, which is sent in the mail. The code must be linked to an email address, creating a user account. Access may be transferred once to a new user, once the initial user no longer requires access. You will need to contact your local Educational Consultant to arrange this.

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Book SynopsisWith Britain''s empire collapsing and Stalin''s ascendant, U.S. officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.This is the story behind the birth of the Cold War, and the U.S.-led liberal global order, told with verve, insight, and resonance for today. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Benn Steil''s book will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan.Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Steil''s gripping narrative takes us through the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations: the Prague coup, theTrade ReviewPainstakingly researched and well-written...a resounding success. * Financial History *Refreshingly heterodox new history... * Thomas Meaney, London Review of Books *An authoritative, detailed, and very revealing study. * Brian G. Cooper, Mainstream Journal *An excellent new book by Benn Steil... Steil's account picks its way through all of the arguments with quiet skill. There are no shocks or revelations here, but Steil's mastery of both the sources and the narrative is exemplary. * Keith Lowe, The Telegraph *Benn Steil has read widely and used archives in both Europe and the USA to write what many will consider to be the definitive history of the Marshall Plan... Steil has expert command of his sources and writes with clarity about a complex set of relations. * Keith Simpson, Total Politics *Big, serious, and thoroughly intelligent. * Neal Ascherson, The New York Review of Books *Steil is [also] a terrific writer... A highly recommended read. * Diane Coyle, Enlightenment Economics *[An] emmensely erudite book. * Christopher Coker, Literary Review *The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War is Benn Steil's second book on global politics and economics in the 1940s. Like The Battle of Bretton Woods (2013), which recounted how the US created the post-second world war financial and monetary order, The Marshall Plan is elegant in style and impressive in insights. Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, has an enviable gift for presenting complex economic and geopolitical issues in crisp, readable prose. * Tony Barber, Financial Times *Brilliant * Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal *This is a gripping, complex, and critically important story that is told with clarity and precision. The book is superbly documented and reflects an extraordinary level of research. * Terry Hartle, Christian Science Monitor *Drawing extensively on U.S. archival material as well as some Russian, British, French, German, Serbian and Czech sources, Steil tells the story of not just the development of the Marshall Plan but also the division of Germany, the founding of NATO and, as the subtitle of his book indicates, the dawn of the Cold War. Steil's account is the most detailed yet... Steil is at his best when describing the myriad agencies and policies that oversaw and executed the Marshall Plan... He writes elegantly on economics, explaining complicated mechanisms used to fuel the Western European recovery, such as implementation of counterpart funds, the creation of the European Payments Union and the cancellation of German debt. * Washington Post *It is hard to overstate the importance of [Steil's] subject to postwar history, because Marshall sowed the seeds of the creation of the European Union, and more immediately led to the establishment of Nato... The author tells the tale with admirable clarity and conviction. * Max Hastings, Sunday Times *[An] important examination of the Marshall Plan... An excellent recounting of an ambitious, huge program that helped rebuild and transform Europe. * Booklist *Steil's fresh perspective on a well-tilled subject will be appreciated by specialists for its wide-ranging analysis and welcomed by general readers for its engrossing style and accessibility. * Publishers Weekly *A fresh perspective on the Marshall Plan ... Though scholars have covered the subject many times before, general readers will do well to choose this lively, astute account ... Steil writes a vivid, opinionated narrative full of colorful characters, dramatic scenarios, villains, and genuine heroes, and the good guys won. It will be the definitive account for years to come. * Kirkus Reviews *Benn Steil has made clarifying complex subjects a specialty: first with his well-received Battle of Bretton Woods, and now with this comprehensive history of the Marshall Plan. Drawing on an equally keen grasp of diplomacy, economics, and grand strategy, Steil sets a new standard for our understanding, not just of the Cold War, but also of the post-Cold War era, where the future of Europe and the role of the United States in it are once again at stake. An outstanding and certainly timely accomplishment. * John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military & Naval History, Yale University *In his new book, Benn Steil tells a double story: that of the launch of the Marshall Plan, the unprecedented American program to help rebuild Europe after World War II, and also of the various Soviet attempts to thwart and counter it. Enlivened by brilliantly wrought pen portraits, this gripping narrative adds a whole new perspective on one of the most fateful periods in world history. * Liaquat Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World *The Marshall Plan is a remarkably insightful and beautifully written work of diplomatic and economic history. Leaders and pundits keep calling for new Marshall Plans around the globe, but how many actually understand what the real one was about, how it was created, and what it achieved? This book will open eyes and minds. * Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve *Benn Steil's fascinating book places the transformative design and huge impact of the Marshall Plan in the context of the early Cold War drama. Engaging, detailed, and well-researched, it takes us behind closed doors in both Europe and the United States, illuminating how the plan was created and how it changed the world. The book's relevance extends well beyond its new historical insights, showing how offshoots of the plan continue to shape modern-day Europe. It also sheds light on how open mindsets and intelligent economic architecture can help anchor an increasingly fluid and uncertain global economy. * Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz and author of The Only Game in Town *In this fascinating book, Benn Steil returns to one of the enduring achievements of American diplomacy: the Marshall Plan to rebuild European allies that were close to collapse after World War II. A lucid and engaging writer, Steil has a rare gift for blending economic and political history, showing how the Marshall Plan dashed Soviet hopes that the United States would retreat from Europe. At a time when the radical Trump administration is trashing American alliances around the globe, this book is a powerful reminder of how hard it was to build them, and how dangerous the world can be without them. * Gary J. Bass, author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide *Compelling and authoritative, The Marshall Plan is a first-rate work of history. But it also bears powerfully on the present, reminding us that if soft power is the power to attract, the Marshall Plan is a stunningly successful example of it. * Fredrik Logevall, Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University *Benn Steil's carefully researched new book reminds us of the economic uncertainties and political turmoil that surrounded U.S. foreign policy-making in the aftermath of World War II. In the end, the right choices were made, first in developing the Marshall Plan providing economic support for economically devastated European allies, and then building in NATO a strong Western military alliance. Here we are seventy years later in very different circumstances, economic and military. The United States and its allies are strongly challenged to find new approaches to renewing the alliances. May our leaders benefit from the practical wisdom and ideas of seventy years ago. * Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve *The Marshall Plan is one of the great success stories of U.S. foreign policy. Benn Steil's well-researched and insightful account reminds us that this iconic example of strategic foresight and imagination was anything but inevitable. On the contrary, his book shows that the Plans creation, refinement, implementation, and eventual success required perseverance, political savvy, and plenty of plain good luck. The moral for our era is clear: successful foreign policies require creative and dedicated public servants and do not emerge without them. * Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School *The Marshall Plan has become a favorite analogy for policymakers. Yet few know much about it. Finally, Benn Steil provides a readable, authoritative account of what it was, what it did, and what it achieved. * Graham T. Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School *Table of Contents1: Prologue 2: Crisis 3: Rupture 4: Plan 5: Trap 6: Unity 7: Persuasion 8: Sausage 9: Subversion 10: Passage 11: Showdown 12: Division 13: Success? 14: Echoes Cast of Characters Appendices Notes

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Book SynopsisWhile the Big Three and their continental Allies fought against Nazi Germany, another war was under way on the continent: the war to shape the political landscape of post-war Europe. In the Balkans, the war overlapped with political and ethnic conflicts, engulfing the region in bloody civil wars. In Central and Eastern Europe, partisan movements engaged the Germans without losing sight of the danger posed by the arrival of the Red Army. In France and in Italy, the adoption of the slogans of national liberation provided the communist parties with a formidable democratic legitimacy, which established them as key players in the political lives of their countries.The British and the Americans worked to stir up, support, control, and direct these resistance groups. London created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Washington the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), both of whom sent agents into occupied Europe to liaise directly with the guerilla groups. Through the Comintern, MoscowTable of ContentsPART 1 1: Resistance and diplomacy in occupied Europe (September 1939-June 1940) 2: The Special Operations Executive at war (July 1940 - June 1941) 3: The communists enter the scene (June 1941 - November 1941) PART 2 4: Uncertain times (December 1941 - December 1942) 5: The militarization of British policy and the beginning Of US challenge in the Mediterranean (January - December 1943) 6: The communist movement on the offensive (January - December 1943) PART 3 7: Civil war and liberation in the Balkans (1944-1945) 8: Central and Eastern Europe between liberation and Soviet occupation (1944-1945) 9: The liberation of Western Europe (1944-1945) 10: Conclusion

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Book SynopsisRussia today is as prominent in international affairs as it was at the height of the Cold War. Yet the role that the economy plays in supporting Russia''s position as a ''great power'' on the international stage is poorly understood. For many, Russia''s political influence far exceeds its weight in the global economy. However, Russia is one of the largest economies in the world; it is not only one of the world''s most important exporters of oil and gas, but also of other natural resources, such as diamonds and gold. Its status as one of the largest wheat and grain exporters shapes commodity prices across the globe, while Russia''s enormous arms industry, second only to the United States, provides it with the means to pursue an increasingly assertive foreign policy. All this means that Russia''s economy is crucial in serving the country''s political objectives, both within Russia and across the world. Russia today has a distinctly political type of economy that is neither the planned economy of the Soviet era, nor a market-based economy of the Euro-Atlantic variety. Instead, its economic system is characterised by a unique blend of state and market; control and freedom; and natural resources alongside human ingenuity. The Russian Economy: A Very Short Introduction introduces readers to the dimensions of the Russian economy that are often ignored by the media and public figures, or exaggerated and misunderstood. In doing so, it shows how Russia''s economy is one of global significance, and helps explain why many of Russia''s enduring features, such as the heavy hand of the state and the emphasis on military-industrial production, have persisted despite the immense changes that took place after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewPresents an overview of the Russian economy over the last 500 years, chronicling its developments and characteristics from the first emergence of the Russian empire to the twenty-first-century regime of Vladimir Putin. * Journal of Economic Literature (Volume 59, no. 1) *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of illustrations 1: Factors shaping Russian economic development 2: The Soviet planned economy 3: The creation of a market 4: The reassertion of the state 5: From modernisation to isolation 6: Russia in the global economy 7: Whither the Russian economy? References Further reading Index

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Book SynopsisLenin lived a controversial life and has had a deeply controversial reputation in the centenary since his death (21 January 1924) His rise from a conventional, educated, provincial, and middle-class background to become not only the leader, even dictator, over the largest country on earth, is dramatic and vital in itself. But it is only part of the story. Even after his death, he was unchallenged as the chief inspirer of a disparate world revolutionary movement which rocked the dominant capitalist world for most of the twentieth century. His admirers and disciples included major intellectual and cultural figures, such as Brecht, Picasso, Sartre, Franz Fanon and Pablo Neruda; disparate radical activists and revolutionaries such as Ho Chi Minh, Joseph Stalin, Mao Ze dong, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Josip Broz Tito, terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhof, and many liberation movements. Despite this, his work and influence have often been written off as no longer releTable of ContentsIntroduction Part One: Lenin before Leninism Part Two: Lenin as Icon and Inspiration: Leninism after Lenin Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis is an open access book available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.Following the centenary of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, this volume features contributions from leading science historians from around the world on the changing roles of the institution in international affairs from its foundation in 1922 to the present. The case studies presented in this volume show the multitude of functions that IUPAP had and how these were related to the changing international political contexts. The book is divided into three parts. The first discusses the interwar period demonstrating how the exclusion of communities of the Central Powers from international scientific institutions imposed by victorious allied countries made IUPAP ineffective until the end of World War II. The second part analyzes the changing roles

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Book SynopsisDonald Raleigh''s Soviet Baby Boomers traces the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of Russia into a modern, highly literate, urban society through the fascinating life stories of the country''s first post-World War II, Cold War generation. For this book, Raleigh has interviewed sixty 1967 graduates of two magnet secondary schools that offered intensive instruction in English, one in Moscow and one in provincial Saratov. Part of the generation that began school the year the country launched Sputnik into space, they grew up during the Cold War, but in a Soviet Union increasingly distanced from the excesses of Stalinism. In this post-Stalin era, the Soviet leadership dismantled the Gulag, ruled without terror, promoted consumerism, and began to open itself to an outside world still fearful of Communism. Raleigh is one of the first scholars of post-1945 Soviet history to draw extensively on oral history, a particularly useful approach in studying a country where the boundTrade Reviewambitious and thought-provoking. * Stefan B. Kirmse, Europe-Asia Studies *This is the first known Soviet oral history study by a Western scholar. ... Raleighs study is fascinating, providing a unique and nostalgic portrayal of the everyday life of the Soviet post-Stalin generation from the late Khrushchev era to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book is full of fresh insights and interesting ideas. * Sergei I. Zhuk, Slavonic and East European Review *[Donald J. Raleigh] has created a sophisticated and nuanced cultural history. His book, eschewing cliché about the necessary and inevitable stasis of Russian society or its long-term yen for authoritarianism, at the same time puts forward thought-provoking, and at times unexpected, material about the lasting and deep impact of the late Soviet era on the present day. * Catriona Kelly, English Historical Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. The Real Nuclear Threat: Soviet Families in Transition ; 2. Overtaking America in School: Educating the Builders of Communism ; 3. "Unconscious Agents of Change": Soviet Childhood Creates the Cynical Generation ; 4. The Baby Boomers Come of Age ; 5. Living Soviet during the Brezhnev-Era Stagnation ; 6. "But then everything fell apart": Gorbachev Remakes the Soviet Dream ; 7. Surviving Russia's Great Depression ; Conclusion: "It's they who have always held Russia together" ; Notes ; Appendix ; Bibliography

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Book SynopsisMohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, is often remembered as a pliant instrument of American power during the Cold War. In this book Roham Alvandi offers a revisionist account of the shah''s relationship with the United States by examining the partnership he forged with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. Based on extensive research in the British and U.S. archives, as well as a wealth of Persian-language diaries, memoirs and oral histories, this study restores agency to the shah as an autonomous international actor and suggests that Iran evolved from a client to a partner of the United States under the Nixon Doctrine. Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah offers a detailed account of three key historical episodes in the Nixon-Kissinger-Pahlavi partnership that shaped the global Cold War far beyond Iran''s borders. First, the book examines the emergence of Iranian primacy in the Persian Gulf as the Nixon administration looked to the shah to fill the vacuum created by the BTrade ReviewRoham Alvandi's Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah does exactly what it promises in its title. The book is an excellent insight into the interactions between the three aforementioned figures in what was a pivotal period of US, Iranian, and Cold War history. Alvandi's skill is writing in such a way as to appeal to the specialist and non-specialist alike. He weaves through a deep history, placing his triumvirate of characters in context without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail, and delivers a highly readable and effective study. * Stephen McGlinchey, E-International Relations *lively, clear and entertaining writing. This is indeed a useful, highly recommendable book that may attract specialists in international relations, Iranian affairs and US political history, as well as the general reader. * David Sarias Rodriguez, History *a major contribution to recent scholarship on the global history of the Cold War ... Alvandi's account of the process and its consequences is the fullest and most revealing to date. * David S. Painter, American Historical Review *Alvandi's commendably clear style and approach serves to highlight and articulate an argument ... redefining the relationship between Iran and the United States away from the popular orthodoxy of the patron-client relationship ... Alvandi takes a refreshing look at a relationship that has long been considered both the high tide of USIran relations and the roots of its eventual collapse. * Ali M. Ansari, English Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Introduction ; 1. The United States and Iran in the Cold War ; 2. "Protect Me": The Nixon Doctrine in the Persian Gulf ; 3. Iran's Secret War with Iraq: The CIA and the Shah-Forsaken Kurds ; 4. A Ford, Not a Nixon: The United States and the Shah's Nuclear Dreams ; Conclusion ; Bibliography ; Index

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Book SynopsisThe first study of the everydayness of political life under Stalin, this book examines Soviet citizenship through common practices of expressing Soviet identity in the public space. The Stalinist state understood citizenship as practice, with participation in a set of political rituals and public display of certain civic emotions serving as the marker of a person''s inclusion in the political world. The state''s relations with its citizens were structured by rituals of celebration, thanking, and hatred-rites that required both political awareness and a demonstrable emotional response. Soviet functionaries transmitted this obligation to ordinary citizens through the mechanisms of communal authority (workplace committees, volunteer agitators, and other forms of peer pressure) as much as through brutal state coercion. Yet, the population also often imbued these ceremonies-elections, state holidays, parades, mass rallies, subscriptions to state bonds-with different meanings: as a popular fTrade ReviewIn this imaginative and meticulously documented study, Serhy Yekelchyk describes the world of 'civic emotions' in postwar Kyiv, in the process opening a window onto the lived experience of ordinary citizens. Written by one of North America's premier historians of modern Ukraine and the Soviet Union, this book makes a signal contribution to the historiography on late Stalinism as well as serving as a pioneering work on Soviet citizenship and the often all-encompassing world of public space and ritual within the Soviet Union. * Lynne Viola, author of The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements *Stalin's Citizens presents a fascinating analysis of the public lives of ordinary men and women under Stalin. Serhy Yekelchyk's close examination of government ceremonies and public events reveals the communal fabric of Soviet society which amalgamated the political and the personal. * Hiroaki Kuromiya, author of Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in Ukraine *Using postwar Kyiv as his setting and privileging everyday practices of expressing Soviet identity rather than state policies, Serhy Yekelchyk makes discriminating use of the archival and published sources to detail and thereby reveal the performative essence and symbolic meaning of Stalinist citizenship. A work of profound insight and sophistication, yet accessible and always engaging, Stalin's Citizens is certain to generate spirited discussion and become required reading for anyone interested in understanding the Soviet way of life in the wake of total war. * Donald J. Raleigh, author of Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation *Stalin's Citizens reaffirms Serhy Yekelchyk's reputation as one of the leading specialists on Ukraine under Stalin. His study of Soviet elections, holiday celebrations, Communist Party agitators and their campaigns joins a growing literature that explores the practice of politics and citizenship in authoritarian states, and highlights the role of public participation in rituals and the articulation of 'civic emotions.' It also challenges the emerging scholarship on 'Soviet subjectivities.' Stalin's Citizens is based on extensive work in still little researched archives in Ukraine. * Mark von Hagen, Arizona State University *Both these very successful and enjoyable books deserve a wide readership among specialists in Soviet and post-1945 European history. Their fluent and accessible presentation, combined with the interesting questions they raise and the engaging material they deploy, make them very suitable too for students on higher-level courses. * Mark B. Smith, Slavonic and East European Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Introduction ; Chapter 1: The Civic Duty to Hate ; Chapter 2: Stalinism as Celebration ; Chapter 3: A Refresher Course in Sovietness ; Chapter 4: The Toilers' Patriotic Duty ; Chapter 5: Comrade Agitator ; Chapter 6: Election Day ; Epilogue ; Notes ; Index

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Book SynopsisThis first biography of Nicolas Nabokov (1903-78) reevaluates the role of the Russian-born American composer as a postwar cultural force, notably as secretary general of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the 1950s and 1960s, and the contribution to twentieth-century music of this collaborator of Diaghilev, Stravinsky, and Balanchine.Trade ReviewConductor, author, translator, multi-lingual cosmopolite, Nicolas Nabokov was one of the most versatile intellectuals of the past century. Vincent Giroud, a brilliant musicologist and Nabokov's very first biographer, narrates his subject's multi-faceted life with unusual clarity and vigor. * Francine du Plessix Gray *They just don't make cultured, quadrilingual, cosmopolitans of this sort anymore. Nicolas Nabokov managed to hit every artistic and intellectual high note of the 20th century, missing no one, from Auden and Balanchine to Virgil Thomson and Edmund Wilson. The genius went equally into the life and the music; Vincent Giroud elegantly captures both in his joyous, star-studded, beautifully modulated biography. - Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Vera: (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)Nicolas Nabokov is our most famous unknown composer. At last there is a book that sheds light on this extraordinary composer's life and work. * Ned Rorem, composer and author *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Introduction ; Note on transliteration of Russian names and phrases ; Chapter 1: The Lubcza Years ; Chapter 2: The Petersburg Years ; Chapter 3: The Road to Exile ; Chapter 4: In Stuttgart and Berlin ; Chapter 5: Paris Debuts ; Chapter 6: Successes and Frustrations ; Chapter 7: New Exile ; Chapter 8: Engagement and Americanization ; Chapter 9: In Wartime Washington ; Chapter 10: In Postwar Germany ; Chapter 11: Music and the Cold War ; Chapter 12: Moving Center Stage ; Chapter 13: Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century ; Chapter 14: Culture Generalissimo ; Chapter 15: The Rasputin Years ; Chapter 16: Disenchantment and New Departure ; Chapter 17: Berlin, Don Quixote, and the CIA ; Chapter 18: Love's Labours Won ; Epilogue ; Checklist of Nabokov's Works and Writings ; Works Consulted ; Notes ; Index

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Book SynopsisRussia is justly famous for its vodka. Today, the Russian average drinking man consumes 180 bottles of vodka a year, nearly half a bottle a day. But few people realize the enormous-and enormously destructive-role vodka has played in Russian politics.In Vodka Politics, Mark Schrad reveals that almost every Russian ruler has utilized alcohol to strengthen his governing power and that virtually every major event in Russian history has been tinged with alcohol. The Tsars used alcohol to dampen dissent and exert control over their courts, while the government''s monopoly over its sale has provided a crucial revenue stream for centuries. In one of the book''s many remarkable insights, Schrad shows how Tsar Nicholas II''s decision to ban alcohol in 1914 contributed to the 1917 revolution. After taking power, Stalin lifted the ban and once again used mandatory drinking binges to keep his subordinates divided, fearful, confused, and off balance. On such occasions, a drunken Khrushchev routinelyTrade Reviewa powerful critique of the effect of the levels of vodka consumption and of government policy ... this book has real value ... [which] principally lies in its laying bare the effects of excessive vodka drinking on the course of development of Russian society and the responsibility of the Russian state in allowing this to develop * Graeme Gill, Australian Journal of Politics and History *Schrad is an engaging writer. He ranges across Russian history with ease, zeroing in on countless striking anecdotes and developing his story within a competent and well-researched narrative. The author brings to bear vast scholarly literature as well as published and unpublished (including archival) primary sources ... Vodka Politics draws upon vast research, tells a lot of great stories, and advances a provocative thesis. * Jonathan Daly, American Historical Review *Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction ; Chapter 2: Vodka Politics ; Chapter 3: Cruel Liquor-Ivan the Terrible and Alcohol in the Muscovite Court ; Chapter 4: The Weird World of Peter the Great ; Chapter 5: Russia's Empresses: Power, Conspiracy, and Vodka ; Chapter 6: Murder, Intrigue, and the Mysterious Origins of Vodka ; Chapter 7: Why Vodka? Russian Statecraft and the Origins of Addiction ; Chapter 8: Vodka and the Origins of Corruption ; Chapter 9: Vodka Domination, Vodka Resistance ; Chapter 10: The Pen, the Sword, and the Bottle ; Chapter 11: Drunk at the Front: Alcohol and the Imperial Russian Army ; Chapter 12: Nicholas the Drunk, Nicholas the Sober ; Chapter 13: Did Prohibition Cause the Russian Revolution? ; Chapter 14: Vodka Commies ; Chapter 15: Industrialization, Collectivization, Alcoholization ; Chapter 16: Vodka and Dissent in the Soviet Union ; Chapter 17: Gorbachev and the (Vodka) Politics of Reform ; Chapter 18: How Vodka Politics Killed the USSR, and Why That's Not Funny ; Chapter 19: Ladies and Gentlemen: Boris Yeltsin ; Chapter 20: Alcohol and the Demodernization of Russia ; Chapter 21: The Russian Cross ; Chapter 22: The Rise and Fall of Putin's ChampionChapter 23: Medvedev Against History ; Chapter 24: An End to Vodka Politics?

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Book SynopsisCommunism Unwrapped is a collection of essays that unwraps the complex world of consumption under communism in postwar Eastern Europe, featuring new work by both American and European scholars writing from variety of disciplinary perspectives. The result is a fresh look at everyday life under communism that explores the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, exchanged and assessed goods. These phenomena, the editors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived and experienced in its widely varied contexts in the region. Consumption pervaded everyday life far more than most other political and social phenomena. From design, to production, to retail sales and black market exchange, Communism Unwrapped follows communist goods from producer to consumer, tracing their circuitous routes. In the communist world this journey was rife with its own meanings, shaped by the special political and social circumstances of these societies. In examining consumption behindTrade ReviewThe essays are consistently readable and insightful, and the editors' introductions to each section help guide readers along the contours of the book's major themes. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *This rich collection of essays offers a unique look at post-1945 Eastern Europe. Departing from the Cold War narrative of endemic shortages and the gloominess of daily life under communism, the essays highlight the everyday creativity and agency of ordinary people. We follow Eastern Europeans to hard-currency stores and gated communities. We see them cross borders to shop in better-supplied neighboring countries and navigate complex social networks to obtain goods and favors. Situating these stories in the context of transnational modernity rather than a totalizing party state, the book offers a rare combination of new research and a compelling theoretical insight. * Malgorzata Fidelis, University of Illinois at Chicago *Consumerism in Eastern Europe has become a fertile field for exploring the dreams and delusions of state socialist politics, as well as the agency and resourcefulness of its citizens. Bren and Neuburger's pioneering volume brings together a range of rich and surprising case studies from across the whole region, significantly enriching our understanding of Eastern European social history during the Cold War. * Paul Betts, University of Sussex *[Bren and Neuburger] provide a valuable and detailed backdrop to a history of places where sausage stands for abundance and bulldozed parmesan symbolises crushed hopes for freedom. * Contemporary European History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Contributors ; Introduction- Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger ; I. Living Large: Introduction ; 1 Tuzex and the Hustler: Living It Up in Czechoslovakia- Paulina Bren ; 2 Utopia Gone Terribly Right: Plutonium's "Gated Communities" in the Soviet Union and the United States- Kate Brown ; 3 "Knife in the Water": Competitive Consumption in Urbanizing Poland- Kacper Poblocki ; II. Quality Control: Introduction ; 4 The Taste of Smoke: Bulgartabak and the Manufacturing of Cigarettes and Satisfaction- Mary Neuburger ; 5 Risky Business: What Was Really Being Sold in the Department Stores of Socialist Eastern Europe?- Patrick Hyder Patterson ; 6 Material Harmony: The Quest for Quality in Socialist Bulgaria, 1960s-1980s- Rossitza Guentcheva ; III. Kitchen Talk: Introduction ; 7 Eating Up Yugoslavia: Cookbooks and Consumption in Socialist Yugoslavia- Wendy Bracewell ; 8 Grounds for Discontent? Coffee from the Black Market to the Kaffeeklatsch in the GDR- Katherine Pence ; 9 From Black Caviar to Blackouts: Gender, Consumption, and Lifestyle in Ceausescu's Romania- Jill Massino ; IV. To Market, To Market... : Introduction ; 10 The "Socialist Bourse": Alcohol, Reputation, and Gender in Romania's Second Economy during the 1980s- Narcis Tulbure ; 11 The Extraordinary Career of Feketevago Ur: Wood Theft, Pig-killing, and Entrepreneurship in Communist Hungary, 1948-1956- Karl Brown ; 12 Keeping It Close to Home: Resourcefulness and Scarcity in Late Socialist and Post-Socialist Poland- Malgorzata Mazurek ; V. Constructive Criticism : Introduction ; 13 Kids, Cars, or Cashews?: Debating and Remembering Consumption in Socialist Hungary- Tamas Dombos and Lena Pellandini-Simanyi ; 14 The House that Socialism Built: Reform, Consumption and Inequality in Postwar Yugoslavia- Brigitte Le Normand ; 15 Shop Around the Bloc: Trader Tourism and its Discontents on the East German-Polish Border- Mark Keck-Szajbel ; Index

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Book SynopsisThe first history of the people at the center of Cold War thought and politics: America's Russia expertsTrade ReviewThe extraordinary range and depth of Engerman's research and the narrative arc knitting this book together from start to finish make Know Your Enemy a consummate work of scholarship and historical imagination. Engerman's critical assessment of all the diverse components within academic 'Sovietology' shatters one cliche after another. Soviet Studies never fashioned a single Cold War vision of the USSR and never served simply as an ideological arm of U.S. foreign policy-even when scholars were most closely linked with diplomatic and military operatives. * Howard Brick, University of Michigan *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Knowing the Cold War Enemy ; Part I: A Field in Formation ; 1. The Wartime Roots of Russian Studies Training ; 2. Social Science Serves the State in War and Cold War ; 3. Institution-Building on a National Scale ; Part II: Growth and Dispersion ; 4. The Soviet Economy and the Measuring-Rod of Money ; 5. The Lost Opportunities of Slavic Literary Studies ; 6. Russian History as Past Politics ; 7. The Soviet Union as a Modern Society ; 8. Soviet Politics and the Dynamics of Totalitarianism ; Part III: Crisis, Conflict, and Collapse ; 9. The Dual Crises of Russian Studies ; 10. Right Turn into Halls of Power ; 11. Left Turn in the Ivory Tower ; 12. Perestroika and the Collapse of Soviet Studies ; Epilogue: Soviet Studies after the Soviet Union ; Essay on Sources

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Book SynopsisEver since the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the prospect of nuclear annihilation has haunted the modern world. But as John Mueller reveals in this eye-opening, compellingly argued, and very reassuring book, our obsession with nuclear weapons is unsupported by history, scientific fact, or logic. Examining the entire atomic era, Mueller boldly contends that nuclear weapons have had little impact on history. Although they have inspired overwrought policies and distorted spending priorities, for the most part they have proved to be militarily useless, and a key reason so few countries have taken them up is that they are a spectacular waste of money and scientific talent. Equally important, Atomic Obsession reveals why anxieties about terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons are essentially baseless: a host of practical and organizational difficulties make their likelihood of success almost vanishingly small.Mueller, one of America''s most distinguished yet provocative internationalTrade ReviewHis witty and unmerciful intellectual attack on the doomsayers, who have been arguing for the past 50 years that rapid proliferation is just around the corner, that we stand on the brink of a new nuclear age, or that it is a few minutes to midnight, is a refreshing one. * Survival *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Part I. The Impact of Nuclear Weapons ; 1. Effects ; 2. Overstating the Effects ; 3. Deterring World War III: Essential Irrelevance ; 4. Influence on History ; 5. Influence on Rhetoric, Theorizing, and Budgets ; Part II. The Spread of Nuclear Weapons ; 6. Arms Races: Positive and Negative ; 7. Proliferation: Slow and Substantially Inconsequential ; 8. The Modest Appeal and Value of Nuclear Weapons ; 9. Controlling Proliferation ; 10. Assessing the Costs of the Proliferation Fixation ; 11. Reconsidering Proliferation Policy ; Part III. The Atomic Terrorist? ; 12. Task ; 13. Likelihood ; 14. Progress and Interest ; 15. Capacity

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Book SynopsisCombining the talents and expert knowledge of an early modern historian of Russia and of a Soviet specialist, Russia''s Empires is the first major study of the entire sweep of Russian history from its earliest formations to the rule of Vladimir Putin. Looking through the lens of empire, which the authors conceptualize as a state based on institutionalized differentiation, inequitable hierarchy, and bonds of reciprocity between ruler and ruled, Kivelson and Suny displace the centrality of nation and nationalism in the Russian and Soviet story. Yet their work demonstrates how imperial polities were key to the creation of national identifications and processes that both hindered and fostered what would become nations and nation-states. Using the concept of empire, they look at the ways that ordinary people imagined their position within a non-democratic polity - whether the Muscovite tsardom or the Soviet Union - and what concessions the rulers had to make, or appear to make, in order to Trade ReviewIn this remarkable work, two of the leading historians of the "imperial turn" have drawn on the past quarter-century of historical work and produced the most readable and insightful single volume of Russian history to date. Valerie Kivelson and Ronald Suny reveal how Russia's empires functioned as polities by employing not just coercive power but discursive power. In doing so, they illuminate how Russia also became an "imperial nation," one where national and imperial policies developed simultaneously yet frequently produced tensions. Russia's Empires is historical synthesis at its finest." - Stephen Norris, Miami UniversityIn this remarkable work, two of the leading historians of the "imperial turn" have drawn on the past quarter-century of historical work and produced the most readable and insightful single volume of Russian history to date. Valerie Kivelson and Ronald Suny reveal how Russia's empires functioned as polities by employing not just coercive power but discursive power. In doing so, they illuminate how Russia also became an "imperial nation," one where national and imperial policies developed simultaneously yet frequently produced tensions. Russia's Empires is historical synthesis at its finest." - Shoshana Keller, Hamilton CollegeRussia's Empires provides an elegant, stimulating and comprehensive account of Russian history, placing the management of imperial diversity at the heart of the narrative. It is both readable and rigorous, and should help to introduce a new generation of students to the many fascinations of Russia's imperial past and present." - Alexander Stephen Morrison, Nazarbayev UniversityOriginal, engaging, authoritative, and beautifully illustrated - no other short survey engages Russia's remarkable history of diversity as fully and effectively as Russia's Empires. This should become the field's go-to text for college courses. An impressive achievement." - Willard Sunderland, University of CincinnatiTable of ContentsList of Maps Preface About the Authors Introduction Thinking About Empire Empires Russia's Imperial Formations Chapter One: Before Empire: Early Rus' Visions of Diversity of Lands and Peoples Before the State: The Peoples of Rus New Models for Understanding Kiev Rus': Stateless Head or Galactic Polity Appanage Rus' and Further Fragmentation Mongol Khans and the Aura of Empire Chapter Two: Imperial Beginnings: Muscovy Building a State; Claiming an Empire Ivan the Terrible: Imperial Principles in Practice Muscovite Autocracy: Power and Obligation Who Were the Muscovites? What was Rus'? The People Speak: The Time of Troubles Imperial Conquest and Control Chapter Three: Disrupting the Easy Road from Empire to Nation State: A Theoretical Interlude Nation, Nationalism, and the Discourse of the Nation Chapter Four: Responsive Rule and Its Limits: Force and Sentiment in the Eighteenth Century Succession, Consultation, and the Politics of Affirmation The Petrine Revolution and the Imperial State Peter's Successors: A Century of Women (and Children) on Top Chapter Five: Russians' Identities in the Eighteenth Century: A Multitude of Possibilities What does Russian mean? Thinking about Nations in the Eighteenth Century A Multiplicity of Nations: The Peoples and Divisions of Empire Imperial Expansion in the Eighteenth Century Chapter Six: Imperial Russia in the Moment of the Nation, 1801-1855 A Kind of Constitution Clash of Empires Imperial Conservatism The Decembrists Official Nationality The Intelligentsia Expansion, Conquest, and Rebellion Imagining the Russian "Nation": Between West and East Chapter Seven: War, Reforms, Revolt, and Reaction A Foolish War The Great Reforms: Nations, Subjects, and Citizens Participatory Politics and Categories of Difference Who Are We? More Questions of National Identity Russification, Diversity, and Empire "Pacifying" the Peripheries Conquering Central Asia Counter-Reforms and Political Polarization Empire and the Revolutionary Movement Chapter Eight: Imperial Anxieties: 1905-1914 The Fate of Empires in the Twentieth Century The Modernizing Empire and its Discontents Imperial Overreach: Tsarist Modernization and Expansion The First Revolution, 1905 When Nationalism Goes Public: Reimagining Empire Chapter Nine: Clash and Collapse of Empires: 1914-1921 The Great War Nationality and Class Across the Revolutionary Divide Soviet Power Soviet Nationality Policies Chapter Ten: Making Nations, Soviet Style: 1921-1953 The Stalin Years, 1928-1953 Beating Peasants into Submission Empire-State and State of Nations Building National Bolshevism From Hot War to Cold War: External Empire as Defensive Expansion Cold War at Home: The Internal Empire Soviet Discursive Power Chapter Eleven: Imperial Impasses: Reform, Reaction, Revolution Policy and Experience: Friendship of the Peoples A Strange Empire The Soviet Union in the World Stagnation Gorbachev and the Test of Perestroika Chapter Twelve: The End of Empire, 1991-2016 . . . Or Not? Vladimir Putin and the Rebuilding of the State Democratic Recession in the Post-Soviet States Post-Superpower Russia and NATO Expansion Red Lines in the Near Abroad: Georgia and Ukraine Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe Soviet Union was the largest state in the twentieth-century world, but its repressive power and terrible ambition were most clearly on display in Europe. Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union transformed itself and then all of the European countries with which it came into contact. This book considers each aspect of the encounter of Stalin with Europe: the attempt to create a kind of European state by accelerating the European model of industrial development; mass murder in anticipation of a war against European powers; the actual contact with Europe''s greatest power, Nazi Germany, during four years of war fought chiefly on Soviet territory and bringing untold millions of deaths, including much of the Holocaust; and finally the reestablishment of the Soviet system, not just in the reestablished Soviet system, but in the Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany. The contributors take up not just high politics but also theTrade ReviewStalin and Europe continues a process of reorientation that seeks to incorporate Eastern European and Russian history into European history. The issue of Stalinism and its place in Europe is a particularly treacherous challenge, which this volume resolves in a series of probing essays that explore the Soviet Union's paradoxical relation to the rest of Europe. A diverse group of historians on Germany, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union presents the results of voluminous, recent research on the subject. They are an important reminder, and provide ample food for thought, on Russia as a force in European history. * Michael Geyer, University of Chicago *I read this fascinating, lively collection through from beginning to end in one sitting. That speaks highly for the quality and the challenges that each of the pieces offers. The contributions are primarily from top national and international experts in the field, including a number of rising stars and scholars from Central Europe. All of the essays are grounded in the archives and based on original research. The volume features a variety of methods, perspectives, and approaches, from newer social history to more traditional military and diplomatic history. The collection as a whole reminds us of the seamless transition from the 1930s in the Soviet Union, into war and conquest, and on into the Cold War. * Robert Gellately, author of Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War *Table of ContentsContributors ; Introduction: Soviet History and European History- Timothy Snyder ; 1. The Gulag and Police Colonization in the Soviet Union- Lynne Viola ; 2. The Sino-Kazakh Border and the Kazakh Famine- Sarah Cameron ; 3. Stalin, Espionage, and Counter-Espionage- Hiroaki Kuromiya and Andrzej Peplonski ; 4. The Polish Underground under Soviet Occupation, 1939-1941- Rafal Wnuk ; 5. Soviet Economic Policy in Annexed Eastern Poland, 1939-1941- Marek Wierzbicki ; 6. Lviv under Soviet Rule, 1939-1941- Christoph Mick ; 7. German Economic Plans for the Soviet Union, 1941-1944- Alex J. Kay ; 8. The Holocaust in Ukraine- Dieter Pohl ; 9. Belarusian Partisans and German Reprisals- Timm Richter ; 10. Stalin's Wartime Vision of the Peace, 1939-1945- Geoffrey Roberts ; 11. The Consolidation of a Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, 1941-1948- Mark Kramer ; 13. The Tito-Stalin Split and the Reconsolidation of the Bloc, 1948-1953- Mark Kramer ; Index

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Book SynopsisIn the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. The authors illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship.Trade Review"This is an important book, one that should be read not just by historians of science but by anyone interested in the unique intellectual culture of Cold War America." (Hunter Heyck, University of Oklahoma)"

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This is a really important story. Jones has set out to reframe much of what we know about twentieth-century environmental history, particularly of the oceans. His archival work is extraordinarily impressive, and the oral history interviews with Russian whalers and marine biologists are, to my knowledge, unique in English-language historical scholarship. But it is Jones's incorporation of whale science and his own personal vignettes that make this book special. Soviet whaling had the single greatest impact on world whale populations in the postwar period, but no other historian has told its inside story. Red Leviathan is a game-changer." -- Jason M. Colby, University of Victoria, author of "Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator" "American environmentalists are inclined to see the United States' Cold War opponent as a villain. Telling the story of the Soviet role in modern whaling, Jones complicates this perspective by acknowledging the Soviets' disproportionate impact while also looking beyond it. He illuminates the contradictions and tensions among different players within the Soviet whaling industry-whalers, the whale scientists who worked with them, and other Russians not directly involved in but still impacted by and shaping the demands of the industry. From the first attempts at whaling in Peter's Russia to the protest era and pushback against whaling by Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherds, Red Leviathan combines thorough research and great storytelling to fill a necessary gap in the history of global whaling." -- Jakobina K. Arch, Whitman College, author of "Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan"Table of ContentsPreface 1 Russia's Whale Problem 2 The Whales of Distant Seas 3 A Revolution in Whaling 4 North Pacific Numbers 5 War and Glory in the Antarctic 6 Aleksei Solyanik and the End of Area V 7 The Kollektiv and the Long Ruble 8 The Cetacean Genocide 9 Scientists Locate Their Prey 10 Whales in the Home 11 A Whale Is Not a Fish: Back to the North Pacific 12 Greenpeace and the View from the Dal'nii Vostok Conclusion Acknowledgments Abbreviations Notes Index

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Book SynopsisA fresh account of the US presidential rhetoric embodied in Cold War international travel. Crowds swarm when US presidents travel abroad, though many never hear their voices. The presidential body, moving from one secured location to another, communicates as much or more to these audiences than the texts of their speeches. In The World is Our Stage, Allison M. Prasch considers how presidential appearances overseas broadcast American superiority during the Cold War. Drawing on extensive archival research, Prasch examines five foundational moments in the development of what she calls the global rhetorical presidency: Truman at Potsdam, Eisenhower's Goodwill Tours, Kennedy in West Berlin, Nixon in the People's Republic of China, and Reagan in Normandy. In each case, Prasch reveals how the president's physical presence defined the boundaries of the Free World and elevated the United States as the central actor in Cold War geopolitics.Trade Review"A first-rate piece of scholarship . . . impressively researched and rich in detail and some of the nuggets that Prasch has unearthed are fascinating. She masterfully weaves the political and historical context that presidents dealt with into a compelling narrative that enriches our understanding of an important time in American and world history that continues to affect us today." * Congress and the Presidency *“A must-read book for scholars and students of political communication, the presidency, and international relations, Prasch’s The World Is Our Stage adds ‘going global’ to the critical lexicon and provocatively refashions our understanding of how the global rhetorical presidency shaped the Cold War and post–Cold War world.” -- Kathleen Hall Jamieson, author of 'Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President; What We Don't, Can’t, and Do Know'“The World Is Our Stage is an engaging and insightful analysis of how presidents exploited emergent media and transportation technologies to create and sustain an audience for the image of the US as the ‘leader of the free world’ during the Cold War. Focusing on this moment of national unity in foreign policy, this book will be of interest to general readers and scholars with interests in the US presidency, foreign relations, the Cold War, and the rhetorical construction of politics.” -- Mary E. Stuckey, author of 'Deplorable: The Worst Presidential Elections from Jefferson to Trump'Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction 1 The Global Rhetorical Presidency 2 Truman at Potsdam 3 Eisenhower and the “Good Will” Tours 4 Kennedy in West Berlin 5 Nixon and the “Opening to China” 6 Reagan at Normandy Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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