The Cold War was a period of international tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, unfolding after World War II and lasting until 1991.   Waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts, the Cold War remains not only a critical part of recent history, but very important for understanding the modern world today and the development of great power confrontation in the 21st century.

The Cold War: Week

The Cold War in the 1960s

Here are some further reading suggestions, covering a range of interpretations:

Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (2006)

John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (1982)

Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (2006)

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