The Cambridge History Of American Foreign Relations: Volume 4, America In The Age Of Soviet Power, 1945-1991

'Happily the new, four-volume book provides an opportunity to scan the past two centuries for indications of the shape of foreign policy in the post-Cold War world. Each of the four books stands on its own. Each offers a clear overview of a particular period written by a distinguished historian drawing on considerable body of research, itself the product of decades of scholarly endeavor. None is simply a chronicle of events.'- World Policy Journal

This is an elegant and concise history of American foreign relations during the Cold War era, based on the most recent American, Chinese, and Soviet literature, written from a post-Cold War perspective. All of the major foreign policy issues, including the origins of the Soviet-American conflict; the extension of the confrontation to Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere on the periphery; wars in Korea and Vietnam; crises involving the Taiwan Straits, Berlin, and Cuba; the rise and fall of detente; imperial overreach; and the critical roles of Reagan and Gorbachev in the 1980s are carefully analyzed and clearly explained.