The Cold War: A Military History

by Stephen E. Ambrose, Caleb Carr, Thomas Fleming

Even fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, it is still hard to grasp that we no longer live under its immense specter. For nearly half a century, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, all world events hung in the balance of a simmering dispute between two of the greatest military powers in history. Hundreds of millions of people held their collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union, two national ideological entities, waged proxy wars to determine spheres of influence–and millions of others perished in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Angola, where this cold war flared hot. Such a consideration of the Cold War–as a military event with sociopolitical and economic overtones–is the crux of this stellar collection of twenty-six essays compiled and edited by Robert Cowley, the longtime editor of The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Befitting such a complex and far-ranging period, the volume’s contributing writers cover myriad angles. John Prados, in “The War Scare of 1983,” shows just how close we were to escalating a war of words into a nuclear holocaust. Victor Davis Hanson offers “The Right Man,” his pungent reassessment of the bellicose air-power zealot Curtis LeMay as a man whose words were judged more critically than his actions. The secret war also gets its due in George Feiffer’s “The Berlin Tunnel,” which details the charismatic C.I.A. operative “Big Bill” Harvey’s effort to tunnel under East Berlin and tap Soviet phone lines–and the Soviets’ equally audacious reaction to the plan; while “The Truth About Overflights,” by R. Cargill Hall, sheds light on some of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets. The often overlooked human cost of fighting the Cold War finds a clear voice in “MIA” by Marilyn Elkins, the widow of a Navy airman, who details the struggle to learn the truth about her husband, Lt. Frank C. Elkins, whose A-4 Skyhawk disappeared over Vietnam in 1966. In addition there are profiles of the war’s “front lines”–Dien Bien Phu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs–as well as of prominent military and civil leaders from both sides, including Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Dean Acheson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Richard M. Nixon, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others. Encompassing so many perspectives and events, The Cold War succeeds at an impossible illuminating and explaining the history of an undeclared shadow war that threatened the very existence of humankind.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, Military History, Historical, American History, Essays

496 pages, Paperback

Published November 7, 2006

About the author

Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. He received his Ph.D. in 1960 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In his final years he faced charges of plagiarism for his books, with subsequent concerns about his research emerging after his death.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is very, very good as far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough.

It is a collection of essays that trace the cold war from the ear confrontations between spy services in post-WW2 Austria through material gained from the former Soviet Union after the fall. Every essay covers its subject well, and each is entertaining to read.

However, there is little to link them together, save for a few words in the introduction to the next piece. The thread that would connect the story of the entire Cold War into a single narative is absent. It is rather like examining a diamond necklace with very fine gemstones connected by a setting that is darned hard to see.

[Ryan Wulfsohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent anthology covering various subjects and events of the Cold War, such as the Berlin airlift, the Korean war, reconnaissance overflights by the US and UK of the Soviet Union, certain aspects of Vietnam, and the development of nuclear weapons and missile technology.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

U.S. & Soviet exploits during the cold war were vast. This book touches on some of the major themes.

[Maurice Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Cold War was what we had instead of World War III. According to this work, it lasted from around late 1946 until the fall of the Soviet Empire in late 1991. During that time period, The U.S. jousted with the Soviet Union for predominant influence in the world, with Communist China as a very hungry and interested, and sometimes active, onlooker. During that period, military activities for all major parties involved became more limited, due to the presence of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles on both sides. Yet, military confrontations did occur, from almost minuscule ones to larger ones like the Korean War and Viet Nam. This book does a good job of pointing out some of the major points of military importance during that period, as it looks to why what did happen happened, as well as why what didn’t didn’t.
The book is broken up into five sections covering, in order, the beginnings of the Cold War, the Korean War, the period when the Cold War was most intense, the Viet Nam War, and the time period from the end of Viet Nam until the collapse of the U.S.S.R... What is collected in it are numerous articles, book excerpts and commentaries, along with interviews and personal memoirs of people involved, that give more depth and color to the events that made up this long-standing conflict for power.
As the title says, much, most in fact, of the book concerns specifically military incidents. Two of the books five sections are given over totally to the two major wars that took place during that time period, Korea and Viet Nam. And many other smaller, sometime much smaller, incidents are gone into as well, such as the breakout from Chinese Communist dominated waters by the British warship Amethyst, a confrontation with the Soviet Union that involved the U.S. Navy over the status of Turkey and the control of the entrance to the Black Sea, and the Berlin Airlift that kept a Berlin blockaded by Communist troops from being starved into submission. Also covered are the overflight of the U.S.S.R. programs authorized by Eisenhower, the “almost war” of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Nixon’s Christmas Bombings of North Viet Nam.
And while focused on more purely military matters, the book also touches on the human elements involved here as well. Spotlights on the personal sides of a number of military leaders are shown here, which help explain why they acted as they did at times. The plight of wives with husband missing or captured during the Viet Nam War is also shown. And, as might be expected, espionage shows its head also, with articles on attempted kidnappings by Soviet agents in Berlin, an underground tunnel built from the American sector in Berlin to the Communist sector that allowed American intelligence agent to tap into the Communist phone lines and communications systems. There’s even an interesting section where a group of imaginative civilians (including Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame) were called in to take part in Pentagon “war games”, to come up with possible solutions or responses to various crisis situations the Pentagon presented to them.
This book does a very good job of illuminating a lot of the whys and wherefores of the Cold War Era. And I can almost guarantee that, by reading it, you will find out some aspects of that time in history that you’d never known before. Definitely worth the read.
Maurice W. Lewis, Jr.
6/13/25

[James S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange book, difficult to review. Essentially a collection of historical articles, extremely loosely connected under the umbrella of the Cold War. The connections are so loose that the book feels like a random collection. Some of the articles are good; others feel trivial. The ebook is terribly formatted and edited.

[Shon]

In depth study of the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia. Good reference source.

[Dev Gurupatham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book for cold War enthusiasts

[Andrew Petti]

email

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I understand why they gave this book the elaborative title of "A Military History" but I wish they hadn't. Yes, every chapter does illustrate a military action of the Cold War, however I felt that the title seems much more ominous than it is. The only base knowledge you need to read this book is very general, an idea of names and dates...maybe access to an atlas. I actually would recommend this book most highly to someone who lived through and took an active interest in the Cold War as many of the stories don't recount statistically relevant occurrences but rather unique and interesting happenings throughout the non-conflict. Also the stories don't have any sort of flow and reading it straight through is not only not necessary but a little difficult. I found it much easier to read chapter by chapter, selecting each story as I went.

[Elisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I would recommend this book to people for no other reason than the two excerpts on the Vietnam War POWs, MIA by Marilyn Elkins (the only woman in the who collection) and "That's Ocay XX Time Is On Our Side" by Geoffrey Norman. Both of these pieces paint a tragic and touching picture of these poor American men used as political pawns by their own country. The collections on early Berlin were also interesting, in my opinion. The rest, although informative, became tedious at times with all the throwing around of armory and jet and other war matérial names I didn't know and didn't particularly care about.

This is a well rounded collection and covers a good panorama of Cold War issues and wars.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book. Slow at times, but some worthwhile information that you wouldn't normally read or hear about.

[Allison Archer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an assigned read in a class about the Cold War. It was an interesting collection of essays that gave unique, "insider" perspectives.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

(entered this years later; read it before Goodreads)

Probably enjoyed it.

Aurora library.