Cold War is the story of the half-century since the end of the Second
World War - the story of our lives. Its framework is the confrontation,
military and ideological, between two great powers that dominated the
world during these years. It is a story of crises and conflict on a
global scale: from the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to
the tanks in the streets of Warsaw, Budapest and Prague, to spies,
student riots and encounters in space.
In Cold War, Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing record epic history
through the detail of individual human experience: the recollections not
only of statesmen whose decisions led to these momentous events, but
also of the ordinary men and women whose lives were bound up in these
years of conflict. Cold War is the first comprehensive history for the
general reader to benefit from the recent opening of Soviet, East
European and Chinese archives as well as formerly classified American
documents. In a driving narrative that it both gripping and informative,
the true story of the Cold War can at last be told.