THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY

THE COLD WAR

A WORLD HISTORY

ODD ARNE WESTAD

“For generations, the Cold War was context, the inescapable setting of political life. This history sets the Cold War itself in context, within the greater landscape of world history, deeply understood and

masterfully presented. It is a powerful synthesis by one of our

great historians.”

—TIMOTHY SNYDER,

author of Bloodlands

“Thanks to Odd Arne Westad, we can no longer think of the Cold War as a two-player game

played by just the American and Soviet superpowers. Westad now gives us a new history of the rivalry between capitalism and communism, tracing its origins back to the 1890s and showing that it had a kind of afterlife beyond the 1990s.”

—NIALL FERGUSON,

Stanford University

“Odd Arne Westad provides a powerful analysis of why the Cold War occurred, what it meant, and why it still matters. This is a book that everyone

interested in politics and foreign policy should read. It is a riveting story, told by one of the foremost world historians.”

—JEREMI SURI, author of

The Impossible Presidency