cover image Cold War: An International History

Cold War: An International History

Carole K. Fink. Westview, $30 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8133-4795-0

The long duel between the U.S. and the Soviet Union emerges in a broad context in this insightful history of the Cold War. Fink (The Genoa Conference), professor emerita of history at the Ohio State University, grounds the book in a perspicacious review of Soviet international relations from 1917 onwards and a deft analysis of how wrangling over the fate of Germany and Eastern Europe during and after WWII laid the foundations for the coming rivalry. Her brisk narrative surveys important flashpoints of the Cold War, from the Berlin Airlift through the 1989 collapse of Soviet communism, and delineates its underlying shape as direct confrontation between Americans, Russians, and Chinese in Europe, Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam gave way to wary policies of coexistence and détente. She shows how the antagonism, while easing somewhat, also took on a life of its own as it subsumed quarrels between Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Pakistanis, or Guatemalan landlords and peasants; local conflicts the world over, she notes, entangled almost against their will two superpowers “still trapped by Cold War reflexes to seek advantage wherever possible.” Fink’s crisp, lucid prose and judicious, even-handed assessments impart a coherent arc to complex events; students especially will find this an invaluable introduction to a watershed era of modern history. (Jan.)