The Longman companion to Cold War and detente, 1941-91

This is the third volume to appear in the new series of Longman Companions to History under the General Editorship of Chris Cook and John Stevenson. Each volume will provide a handy reference work to a major area of historical study, and is written by a leading scholar in the field. Today, the Cold War is a chapter of history that is ended; whatever the future brings, it will be different. John W. Young's book is therefore timely as well as useful. It surveys East-West relations, in all their manifestations, from the Grand Alliance of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. For most of this fifty-year span, the tensions of the Cold War were the dominating fact of world history; and this volume provides a concise guide to its major characters, conflicts, crises and conferences, setting them in their full international context.^ It contains a major Chronology, set out in 12 stages, which draws together all the different aspects and theatres of the Cold War into a single 'narrative'; concise accounts of 70 Crises and Conflicts, and their significance; notes on 28 Conferences and Summits; notes on 40 Treaties and Organizations; lists and dates of the key Office-holders in the USA, USSR, China, Great Britain, France, (West) Germany, the United Nations and NATO; concise Biographies of 103 major political figures of the Cold War; a Glossary of terms; statistical data on the US/Soviet balance of Strategic nuclear weapons 1956-79; and an extended annotated Bibliography. Though centred on the international policies of the USA and the USSR, the book throws light on almost every aspect of postwar international history from the rise of Mao's China to the fall of the Warsaw Pact, ranging from Vietnam to Angola, from Afghanistan to Cuba, from Margaret Thatcher to Kim II Sung.^ The great wealth of information it contains has been carefully selected and presented to meet the practical needs of students and other readers. As with the series generally, it is intended as a reader-friendly desk-companion for continuous use, rather than a shelf-book for occasional reference. It will be an invaluable aid to anyone interested in the history and politics of modern times.