American Imperatives: The Cold War and Other Matters [9781784780562]

Overview

A radical reinterpretation of the Cold War by its most iconoclastic historian.

What was the cold war? Conventional wisdom makes it coextensive with an epoch stretching from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a geopolitical period dominated by the confrontation between the United States and the USSR. In a fundamental challenge to prevailing orthodoxy, Anders Stephanson explodes this misconception, which has misled historians and obscured the US-centered nature of the entire process. He argues that “the cold war” is better understood as the frame that made the global role of the US after 1947 not only possible but imperative, and that in its classic form it ended in 1963, after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

American Imperatives does not assume that the causes of the great superpower rivalry rest solely with the United States. But the frame was unmistakably and ineradicably American. Without it, there would not have been, properly speaking, a cold war.

The book, American Imperatives: The Cold War and Other Matters [Bulk, Wholesale, Quantity] ISBN#9781784780562 in Paperback by Anders Stephanson may be ordered in bulk quantities. Minimum starts at 25 copies. Availability based on publisher status and quantity being ordered.