The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War - Hardcover

How did it happen that the United States and the Soviet Union managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War confrontation without going to war with one another? Historian John Lewis Gaddis suggests an answer to this and other questions about post-war diplomacy. Gaddis uses declassified American and British documents to explore several key issues in Cold War history that remain unresolved: precisely what it was about the Soviet Union's behaviour after World War II that American leaders found so threatening; whether the United States really wanted a sphere of influence in post-war Europe; and what led the Truman administration first to endorse, but then immediately avoid American military involvement on the mainland of Asia.

About the Author John Lewis Gaddis, Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio University, is recognized as one of the leading authorities on United States foreign relations since World War II. The author of The United States and Origins of the Cold War and Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, he is currently writing the diplomatic history volume in the forthcoming Oxford History of the United States and is working as well on a biography of George F. Kennan.