The most comprehensive treatment of the Cold War is Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). It consists of articles by leading scholars. See also the stimulating overview by Marc Trachtenberg, The Cold War and after: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).
An excellent analysis of the Cold War is Bernd Stöver, Der Kalte Krieg: Geschichte eines radikalen Zeitalters, 1947–1991 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011); also very useful is John W. Young, The Longman Companion to America, Russia and the Cold War, 1941–1998 (Harlow: Longman, 1999).
See also Odd Arne Westad, Reviewing the Cold War Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000). A detailed, comprehensive study of the imposition of communism in Eastern Europe is Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 (London: Allen Lane, 2012).
A still valuable analysis is Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd edn (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974).
The founding father of post-revisionism, John Lewis Gaddis, has rethought his position, and the result is We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). He concludes that ideology is the central theme, and this is an indispensable source.
Among the best overviews of the Cold War are Richard Crockatt, The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991 (New York: Routledge, 1995); J.P.D. Dunbabin, The Cold War: The Great Powers and Their Allies, 2 vols. (Harlow: Longman, 1994); Ralph B. Levering, The Cold War: A Post–Cold War History (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1994); Ronald E. Powaski, The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Martin Walker, The Cold War: A History (New York: Henry Holt, 1993). See also Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953–1971 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.), Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1991: A Retrospective History (London: Frank Cass, 1994); John W. Young, Cold War Europe, 1945–1989: A Political History (London: Edward Arnold, 1991). A good selection of articles is Klaus Larres and Ann Lane (eds.), The Cold War: The Essential Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
A fine study concentrating on the actions of Roosevelt and other US politicians in the immediate post-war period is Frank Costigliola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). See also J. Robert Moskin, Mr Truman’s War: The Final Victories of World War II and the Birth of the Postwar World (New York: Random House, 2002); Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).
On Russian nationalism, see David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
The most stimulating accounts of Soviet policy are Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) and Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). See also Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Hannes Adomeit, Soviet Risk-Taking and Crisis Behavior: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982) is a thought-provoking and stimulating study. On Khrushchev’s foreign policy see Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).
On nuclear weapons, see John Lewis Gaddis, Philip Gordon, Ernest R. May and Jonathan Rosenberg, Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). See also Francis J. Galvin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012); Raymond Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, rev. edn (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1989). A critical account of US military and foreign policy is Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (London: Verso, 2004); the most detailed and authoritative study of Britain’s nuclear submarine service is Peter Hennessy and James Jinks, The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service since 1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2015). Stories of some of the Cold War patrols will make your hair curl.
On Western Europe, see the stimulating books by Geir Lundestad, ‘Empire’ by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); The United States and Western Europe since 1945: From ‘Empire’ by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). On détente, see Richard Davy, European Détente: A Reappraisal (London: Sage, 1992); John van Oudenaren, Détente in Europe: The Soviet Union and the West since 1953 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991); Odd Arne Westad (ed.), The Fall of Détente: Soviet-American Relations during the Carter Years (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997).
On Eastern Europe, see Odd Arne Westad, Sven Holtsmark and Ivor B. Neumann (eds.), The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994). One of the best accounts of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe is Victor Sebestyen, Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009).
On Bulgaria, see Vesselin Dimitrov, Stalin’s Cold War Soviet Foreign Policy, Democracy and Communism in Bulgaria, 1941–1948 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); see also Norman Laporte, Kevin Morgan and Matthew Worley (eds.), Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917–1953 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
On Britain, see Sean Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War, 1945–1991 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
The best book on Italy is C. J. Duggan and C. Wagstaff (eds.), Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society, 1948–1958 (Oxford: Berg, 1995).
On the Korean War, see William Whitney Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
On the Middle East, see Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East from World War Two to Gorbachev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and Rajan Menon, Soviet Power and the Third World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986).
On Vietnam, see Ang Cheng Guan, Ending the Vietnam War: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005).
On Laos, the outstanding book is Martin Stuart-Fox, Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State: The Making of Modern Laos (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2002). The section on Laos is based mainly on this study.
On Japan, see Walter LaFeber, A History of US-Japan Relations (New York: Norton, 1997); William R. Nester, Power across the Pacific: A Diplomatic History of American Relations with Japan (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996); Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
The standard biography of Khrushchev is William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (London: Free Press, 2003). This is a monumental study which provides an enormous amount of information on Khrushchev as a person and his relationship with the US and the West, among other things. See also Sergei N. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). His son reveals much about the private life and thinking of his father. See also Michael R. Beschloss, Kennedy v. Khrushchev, the Crisis Years, 1960–1963 (London: Faber & Faber, 1991).
Khrushchev was loquacious, and there are various volumes of his reminiscences, including Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 1, trans. and ed. by Strobe Talbott (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1970).
Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, with an introduction, commentary and notes by Edward Chankshaw, trans. by Strobe Talbott (London: Sphere Books, 1971).
Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes, with a foreword by Strobe Talbott, trans. and ed. by Jerrold L. Schecter and Vyacheslav V. Luchkov (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1974).
Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, vol. 2, trans. and ed. by Strobe Talbott (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1974).
Worth consulting is Cyrus Vance’s memoirs, Hard Choices (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).
Simon Hall, 1956: The World in Revolt (London: Faber, 2015) has a chapter on Poland and one on Hungary.
On Eisenhower, see Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Vol 2: The President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984); Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006); Evan Thomas, Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World (New York: Little, Brown, 2012) and Yanek Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment: The Race for Space and World Prestige (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); on Kennedy, see Alan Brinkley, John F. Kennedy: The American Presidents Series: The 35th President, 1961–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2012); on the Bay of Pigs, see Jim Rasenberger, The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs (New York: Scribner, 2011); on Nixon, see Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon, Vol. 1: The Education of a Politician, 1913–1962 (New York: Touchstone Books, 1987) and Nixon, Vol. 2: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014) and also R. S. Litwak, Détente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969–1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
On Johnson, the magisterial volumes of Robert A. Cato, especially The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power, vol. 4 (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2012); see also Charles Peters, Lyndon B. Johnson, the American Presidents Series: The 36th President (New York: Henry Holt and Times Books, 2010).
On Dean Rusk, see Warren I. Cohen, Dean Rusk (Totowa, NJ: Cooper Square, 1980) and Dean Rusk, As I Saw It, ed. by Daniel S. Papp (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990). On the Berlin crises, see H. M. Harrison, ‘Ulbricht and the concrete “rose”: New archival evidence on the dynamics of Soviet-East German relations and the Berlin crisis, 1958–1961’, Cold War International History Project. Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, no. 5, May 1993, and H. M. Harrison, ‘New evidence on Khrushchev’s 1958 Berlin Ultimatum’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin. Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, no. 4, Autumn 1994.
On the Cuban Missile Crisis, the must-read is Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow (eds.), The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997).
On the Middle East, see G. Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990).
On Shevardnadze, see Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl and Melvin A. Goodman, The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze (London: Hurst, 1997).
On the reunification of Germany, see Philip Zelikow, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
The best source on culture during the Cold War is David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). See also Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 2000).
Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) is a very readable and entertaining account of pop culture in a Soviet city.
An excellent source for Soviet and Russian foreign policy is Robert H. Donaldson, Joseph L. Nogee and Vidya Nadkarni, The Foreign Policy of Russia: Changing Systems, Enduring Interests, 5th edn (London: Routledge, 2014).
On Soviet nationality policy, see S. Seweryn Bialer, Politics, Society, and Nationality inside Gorbachev’s Russia (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989).
Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Détente (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984) is a stimulating account.
The leading book on the arms race is David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
On Soviet espionage, the most revealing sources are Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 2000) and The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World (London: Allen Lane, 2005).
On the Gorbachev years, see the revealing memoirs of Jack F. Matlock Jr, Autopsy on an Empire (New York: Random House, 1995); Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (London: Doubleday, 1996) reveals much but not all.
Pierre Razoux, The Iran-Iraq War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015) is outstanding and an indispensable guide to the Middle East today.
On the end of the Cold War, see Beth A. Fischer, The Regan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997); Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transformation: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994). Two first class studies are Sergii Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (London: One World, 2014) and Robert Service, The End of the Cold War, 1985–1991 (London: Macmillan, 2015). The latter is the most scholarly, detailed account available of US-Soviet relations during this period.
On espionage, see the very revealing Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (New York: HarperCollins, 1990). See also Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray, 2001), which reads, at times, like a James Bond novel. The authoritative account of MI5 is Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Allen Lane, 2009). MI6 is revealed in Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909–1949 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010). We shall have to wait some time for the next volume! The leading study of espionage during the Second World War is Max Hastings, The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas, 1939–1945 (London: William Collins, 2015) is essential background reading for an understanding of the emergence of the Cold War. Two very interesting studies of members of the Fab Five are Geoff Andrews, The Shadow Man: At the Heart of the Cambridge Spy Circle (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015) and Andrew Lownie, Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess (London: Hodder, 2015). The best source on Philby is Ben Macintyre, A Spy among Friends: Philby and the Great Betrayal (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
A revealing account of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Russia is Yegor Gaidar, Days of Defeat and Victory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999). See also Andrei Grachev, Final Days: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). A much more detailed account of the Cold War and after is Andrey Grachev, Le Passé de la Russie est Imprévisible: Journal de bord d’un enfant de dégel (Paris: Akma Editeur, 2014).
The outstanding source on the Cold War in the Third World is Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Norman Stone, The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War (London: Allen Lane, 2010) is an entertaining and instructive analysis.
The best source on Britain’s poison war is Ulf Schmidt, Secret Science: A Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
On a lighter note, see Bruce Adams, Tiny Revolutions in Russia: Twentieth-Century Soviet and Russian History in Anecdotes (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005).
An instructive and entertaining account of modern China is Jonathan Fenby, Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How It Got There, and Where It Is Heading (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). Also very informative is Timothy Beardson, Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China’s Future (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).
The most informative biography of Mao is Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005); see also Andrew G. Walder, China under Mao (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), who lays bare the sufferings of the Chinese population and shows that in the decades after Mao ‘China began the long process of recovering from his misrule.’
On Chiang Kai-shek the most detailed study is Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
See also D. Borg and W. Heinrichs, Uncertain Years: Chinese-American Relations, 1947–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); see also Margaret MacMillan, Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2007).
The best book on the Chinese economy and transition to capitalism by far is Ronald Coase and Ning Wang, How China Became Capitalist (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Three outstanding studies of the early years of the People’s Republic are Frank Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945–1957 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013); Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010) and The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976 (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). They are a stunning achievement.
The best biography of Deng Xiaoping by far is Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine, Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) and is scholarly, detailed and thoughtful, revealing his Marxism and his ruthlessness. See also Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013) which concentrates heavily on the post-1978 period; and Michael Dillon, Deng Xiaoping: The Man Who Made Modern China (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015).
The best source on the Communist Party of China is Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers (London: Allen Lane, 2010).
On the rise of religion in China, see Bob Fu and Nancy French, God’s Double Agent: The True Story of a Chinese Christian’s Fight for Freedom (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013).
An eye opening account of the one-child policy is Mei Fong, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).
On ping-pong diplomacy, an excellent source is Nicholas Griffin, Ping-Pong Diplomacy: Ivor Montagu and the Astonishing Story behind the Game That Changed the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).
The best book on the early stages of the Sino-Soviet relationship is Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959 (Lanham, MD, and London: Lexington Books, 2015). It is by two Chinese scholars who have had access to Chinese Party and government archives. A companion volume covering the years 1960–73 is in preparation. See also Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-Yu Li (eds.), China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949–Present (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010); Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Dieter Heinzig, The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945–1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2004); Austin Jersild, The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); Mercy Kuo, Contending with Contradictions: China’s Policy toward Soviet Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Sino-Soviet Split, 1953–1960 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001); Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Washington, DC, and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center and Stanford University Press, 2009); Odd A. Westad (ed.), Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Elizabeth Wishnick, Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow’s China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
On Sino-American relations, see Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Shu Guang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950–1953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995); Shu Guang Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949–1958 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Henry Kissinger, On China (London: Penguin, 2012) is a valuable, learned analysis of modern China and Sino-American relations; and Bobo Lo, Axis of Convenience Moscow, Beijing, and the New Geopolitics (London: Chatham House, 2008).
On Cambodia, see William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).
The leading study of North Korea is Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
The most informative and instructive analysis of what it was like to prepare for nuclear war in Britain is Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst, 1945–2010 (London: Penguin, 2010).
On the West’s defeat in Afghanistan there is a revealing and instructive study by Christina Lamb, Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World (London: William Collins, 2015).
Two excellent surveys of communism are Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (London: Bodley Head, 2009) and Robert Service, Comrades: Communism: A World History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2007).