The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind

by Martin Sixsmith

'It was time for a vivid, popular history of the Cold War, and this is it' The Times

More than any other conflict, the Cold War was fought on the battlefield of the human mind. Nearly thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its legacy still endures: not only in our politics, but in our own thoughts and fears.

Drawing on a vast array of untapped archives and unseen sources, Martin Sixsmith vividly recreates the tensions and paranoia of the Cold War, framing it for the first time from a psychological perspective. Revisiting towering personalities like Khrushchev, Kennedy and Nixon, as well as the lives of the unknown millions who were caught up in the conflict, this is a gripping account of fear itself - one which is more resonant than ever today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Russia, Politics, Historical, Military Fiction, War

592 pages, Hardcover

First published November 11, 2021

About the author

George Martin Sixsmith, British author and journalist.
Sixsmith joined the BBC in 1980 where he worked as a foreign correspondent, most notably reporting from Moscow during the end of the Cold War. He also reported from Poland during the Solidarity uprising and was the BBC's Washington correspondent during the election and first presidency of Bill Clinton. He was based in Russia for five years, the US for four, Brussels for four and Poland for three.

Sixsmith left the BBC in 1997 to work for the newly elected government of Tony Blair. He became Director of Communications (a civil service post), working first with Harriet Harman and Frank Field, then with Alistair Darling. His next position was as a Director of GEC plc, where he oversaw the rebranding of the company as Marconi plc.

In December 2001, he returned to the Civil Service to join the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions as Director of Communications in time to become embroiled in the second act of the scandal over Jo Moore. Moore was special adviser to the transport secretary Stephen Byers and had been the subject of much public condemnation for suggesting that a controversial announcement should be "buried" during the media coverage of the September 11, 2001 attacks.[1]

Sixsmith incurred the displeasure of Downing Street when his email advising Byers and Moore not to bury more bad news was leaked to the press. Number Ten attempted to "resign him", but had later to issue an apology and pay him compensation. Sixsmith was widely expected to write a memoir or autobiography in the wake of his civil service departure, but was gagged by the government[citation needed] Instead, he produced a novel about near-future politics called Spin, published in 2004.

His second novel, I Heard Lenin Laugh, was published in 2005. In 2006 he was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 to present a series of programmes on Russian poetry, literature and art.

In 2007 he wrote The Litvinenko File, an examination of the feud between the Kremlin and Russia's émigré oligarchs.

In 2008 Sixsmith worked on two BBC documentaries exploring the legacy of the KGB in today's Russia and also presented a BBC documentary, The Snowy Streets of St. Petersburg, about artists and writers who fled the former Eastern bloc.

In 2009 he wrote The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, about the forcible separation of a mother and child by the nuns of an Irish convent during the 1950s, and the subsequent attempts of the mother and child to contact one another.[2] The book was adapted into the film Philomena, directed by Stephen Frears, starring Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan (as Sixsmith), and written by Coogan and Jeff Pope; it premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was released in the UK on November 1 2013.

In February 2010 Sixsmith wrote Putin's Oil, about Russia's energy wars and their consequences for Moscow and the world.

He worked as an adviser to the BBC political sitcom The Thick of It, and the Oscar-nominated film, In the Loop.

In 2011, he presented Russia: The Wild East, a 50-part history of Russia for BBC Radio 4, the last episode of which was broadcast on 12 August.[3] His book Russia, a 1,000 Year Chronicle of the Wild East was published by Random House.

In 2014 Sixsmith will present a 25 part programme about the history of psychology and psychiatry for the BBC radio.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like others of my generation born in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis, spending my youth under the shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction and seeing the fall of the USSR in the late 1980s. This book revisits a part of history that I tried my hardest not to think about whilst living through it. The author combines his journalistic experiences and studies in psychology, into a very interesting and illuminating book. Overall a far more balanced view of the Cold War, described through the histories of the key players and the strategies used.

The book is not a revisionist attempt at explaining the two superpowers jousting for world hegemony. The author delves deeper into the psychology and culture of the two antagonists, revealing that both sides made mistakes of outlandish hubris and used excessive ideological zeal in defending their view of the world.

The author successfully explores the personal impact on individuals dealing with the nihilistic prospect of total world destruction. The affects of this mind numbing prospect on culture and society and the social impact on those who lived through it.

Overall a timely and poignant retelling of the events leading up to the collapse of Communism and how the West, through arrogance and greed, trashed the chance of a new world order based on cooperation and equality. Written before the events happening now in the Ukraine, that hold a mirror up to those lost opportunities.

[Rob Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The psychology of nuclear brinkmanship that terrified a generation

The author shares many illustrative anecdotes from his time as a prominent journalist in Russia. He fills the book with fascinating insights into the psychology of one of the most uncertain periods in world history.

Sixsmith reminds us that we continue to live with the emotional trauma of the cold war. Today’s decision-makers are no better at carefully examining their psychological assumptions than yesterday’s leaders. Nuclear missiles are still pointed at our cities. Our lives still depend on the quirks, paranoias and anxieties of the men and women who lead us.

[Rob Sedgwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very informative book tracing the Cold War from the end of WW2 up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and an Afterward which takes us up to the annexation of Crimea - nicely anticipating the Ukraine invasion which took place presumably a few weeks after the book was written.

The book is quite long but it covers a huge amount of material and doesn't dwell on the specifics of events like the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the subtitle says, this is about the Cold War Mind, not the Cold War itself. That does mean that some leaders on both sides are barely mentioned, while others are covered at length.

What was apparent was how much the two sides had in common and when they did meet then they tended to find much to agree on. The most dangerous times seemed to be when there was not much dialogue and each side had to guess from the actions of the other what its intentions were. Two years of Covid near-isolation for Putin comes to mind from the present-day - one wonders if he had been more in circulation with other leaders whether the current crisis would have happened.

Martin Sixsmith spent a lot of time in Russia and is well placed to understand both sides of the Cold War Mind. This really skims over the last 30 years, so a sequel from the collapse of the Soviet Union onwards would be very welcome, as it's obvious that the story is not over.

[Eve Gibbons · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a challenge - there was a reason why I opted out of GCSE history. Took me so long cos I was busy googling the meaning of every second word luv. Some brevity would have been appreciated but overall very informative

[Rafał Grochala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book!

[Dmitry · Rating 3 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Смешанные чувства у меня по отношению к этой книге. Во-первых, несмотря на огромный размер, The War of Nerves ничего нового не добавляет к тому, что я уже знал притом, что я прочитал не так и много книг об эпохе Холодной Войны. Такое ощущение, что автор взял что-то у одного автора, что-то у другого, а что-то у третьего. Возможно, в книге и проскальзывает авторский взгляд, однако я его не обнаружил.

Во-вторых, книга условно имеет две составляющие – историческую и психологическую. Если бы автор посвятил всю книгу исключительно психологии Холодной войны, в таком случаи книга была бы в разы лучше и интересней. К сожалению, половина книги, это пересказ обычной истории противостояния СССР и США начиная с окончания Второй Мировой войны и до распада СССР. Так вот, читать именно историю мне было скучно. Когда же книга становился, условно говоря, психологией того периода, то тогда становилось интересно. Впрочем, опять же, ничего нового я тут не обнаружил. К примеру, автор рассказывает, как случайно чуть не началась ядерная война (случай с одной советской ядерной подводной лодкой) или когда рассказывает про «охоту на ведьм» во времена Маккартизма или описывает психологическое состояние граждан США во время карибского кризиса и так далее. Сказать что книга скучная, я не могу, но и сказать, что она меня увлекла, тоже будет явным преувеличением. Тем не менее, если взять аудио версию этой книги, то в таком случаи книга идеально подошла бы для коротания времени в общественном транспорте или во время прогулки, ибо книга не требует от читателя постоянного внимания. Да, книга построена на хронологической последовательности, но вполне может быть рассмотрена в качестве чтения интересующих глав. К примеру, первые главы о времени Сталина были невероятно скучными, за исключением попытки построить психологический портрет Сталина в самом конце данной главы, но вот дальше книга стала более интересной. Или можно пропустить главу про соперничество между СССР и США за космос, и перейти сразу к следующе теме.

Так какой же вывод можно сделать по итогу прочтения? Обе стороны конфликта (Холодной войны), условно говоря, в какой-то момент просто начали сходить с ума. Проявлялось это в виде усиливающейся паранойи, которая, в конце концов, действительно могла привести к ядерному Армагеддону. Поэтому попытки улучшения отношений между СССР и США были явно положительным решением обеих сторон. Мне особо понравился пример, когда автор рассказывает знаменитую историю, которая в дальнейшем воплотилась в знаменитый фильм «Маньчжурский кандидат». Что это, если не паранойя? В СССР была своя паранойя, ибо многие советские вожди верили в идею заговора со стороны США по свержение советского режима. Как мне кажется, обе страны думали, что противоположная сторона готовится к войне и из-за этого наращивали свои собственные военные мощности, чем создавали самосбывающееся пророчество, иллюзию «подготовки к войне», которую и видела противоположная сторона. Внешне это выгляди забавно, но в реальности мир действительно в какой-то момент мог прийти к ядерной войне, ибо обе страны жили в собственном иллюзорном пузыре, т.е. обе страны видели искажённый, а не реальный мир. Возможно, что-то подобное и пытаются предотвратить США, решаясь не додавливать президента Путина.

I have mixed feelings about this book. First of all, despite its huge size, The War of Nerves adds nothing new to what I already knew, even though I haven't read many books about the Cold War era. It feels like the author took something from one author, something from another, and something from a third. There may be an author's perspective slipping into the book, but I did not detect it.

Secondly, the book conventionally has two components - historical and psychological. If the author had devoted the whole book exclusively to the psychology of the Cold War, the book would have been much better and more interesting. Unfortunately, half of the book is a retelling of the usual history of the confrontation between the USSR and the USA from the end of World War II to the collapse of the USSR. So, it was the history that I found boring to read. When the book became, conditionally speaking, the psychology of that period, then it became interesting. However, again, I found nothing new here. For example, the author tells how a nuclear war almost started by accident (the case of a Soviet nuclear submarine), or when he tells about the “witch hunt” during McCarthyism, or describes the psychological state of US citizens during the Caribbean crisis, and so on. To say that the book is boring, I can't, but to say that it fascinated me would also be a clear exaggeration. Nevertheless, if you take the audio version of this book, then in this case the book would be ideal for shortening time in public transport or during a walk, for the book does not require the reader's constant attention. Yes, the book is structured chronologically, but it could very well be considered reading the chapters of interest. For example, the first chapters on Stalin's time were incredibly boring, except for the attempt to build a psychological portrait of Stalin at the very end of this chapter, but beyond that, the book became more interesting. Or you can skip the chapter on the rivalry between the USSR and the US for space, and go straight to the next topic.

So what conclusion can be drawn from the reading? Both sides of the conflict (Cold War), conventionally speaking, at some point, simply began to go mad. This manifested itself in the form of increasing paranoia, which, in the end, could indeed lead to nuclear Armageddon. So trying to improve relations between the USSR and the US was a positive decision. I particularly liked the example where the author tells a famous story that later materialized into the famous movie “The Manchurian Candidate”. What is this if not paranoia? The USSR had its own paranoia, for many Soviet leaders believed in the idea of a US plot to overthrow the Soviet regime. It seems to me that both countries thought that the other side was preparing for war and therefore built up their own military capabilities, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, the illusion of “preparing for war”, which the other side saw. On the surface, it looks funny, but in reality, the world could come to a nuclear war at some point, because both countries lived in their own illusory bubble, i.e. both countries saw a distorted, not real world. Perhaps the U.S. is trying to prevent something like this by deciding not to push President Putin.

[Ronald J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in Cold War history, this book brings a unique perspective: the psychology of this event, and how it shaped people’s long-term thinking. The author writes in the Preface:

this book proposes to examine – is the way this extraordinary period shaped not just the experiences but the thinking of millions of people, from the politicians at the top to the ordinary men and women scurrying down the steps to their basement fallout shelters; mental processes inculcated by the Cold War continue to influence the way we see the world today.

“Confirmation bias, the tendency to select only that information which confirms our own beliefs, abounded” during the Cold War. The author was a student at Harvard in late 1970s, and spent the endgame of the Cold War between the East and West as a correspondent for the BBC. From 1980 to 1997, he spent four years in Brussels, three in Warsaw, four in Washington DC and five in Moscow. He was at Reagan’s Moscow University speech. He says that “Soviet communism collapsed, after seventy-four years of the greatest social experiment the world has ever seen.” I’m not sure that’s how I’d say it: perhaps the gravest mass grave tragedy ever attempted to change human nature?

This is a 600 page work, not including endnotes (which are online), but I thoroughly enjoyed the read. All the major events of the Cold War are here, from Yalta to Potsdam, dropping of the bomb, the death of Stalin, Korean and Vietnam war, Sputnik, the Berlin Wall, the Kitchen Debates between Nixon and Khruschev, Cuban missile crisis, Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, the fall (or pushed over?) of the Berlin Wall, right up to the lowering of the flag over the Kremlin of the USSR on December 25, 1991. All of this is explored through the lens of psychology, which is interesting.

One humorous story is the American Exhibition in Moscow in July 1959, where Nixon and Khruschev had their famous debate over American vs. USSR progress near an exhibit showing an American kitchen, with all of the appliances. Khruschev claimed USSR kitchens had the same amenities. The book has a picture of a kitchen in a new apartment built by Khruschev, and it look like it’s right out of the Honeymooners set.

It was Eisenhower who explained the Domino Theory to Americans: “You have a row of dominoes set up,’ Eisenhower told the American media in an image that would haunt the
western imagination. ‘You knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.’ Since the last domino was the United States itself. …Moscow reached the same conclusion.”

He compares the pilots of the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, who dropped the bomb, with that of Claude Eatherly, the pilot of Straight Flush, the weather reconnaissance plane that gave the Enola Gay the go-ahead, who blighted by guilt and regret. I’m not so sure that Margaret Thatcher admire Gorbachev more than she admired Reagan, but no doubt she saw in Gorbachev a new type of Soviet leader. And the USSR ends, not with a bang, but with a telling whimper:

“Gorbachev said he had decided to sign his resignation decree straight away, rather
than doing it live on television. But his Soviet-made pen wouldn’t work. The image sums up the strange mixture that was the Soviet Union: both mighty and powerful and rickety and incompetent. Tom Johnson, an official from CNN who was there to oversee the live broadcast. He handed Gorbachev his Mont Blanc pen…A downbeat Gorbachev gave his farewell address sitting at an empty desk with a red flag hanging limply behind him. Gorbachev was admitting defeat. He had failed to revitalise the Soviet system and the USSR was about to pass into history."

“Yeltsin watched the speech on television, he gave orders for the Red Flag to be taken down from the Kremlin immediately and the white, blue and red flag of Russia to be hoisted. All had understood that the Red Flag would be flying until 31 December. But Yeltsin ordered a workman to take it down, fold it up and put it away in a Kremlin basement.”

The author ends on this somber observation:

I am struck by how futile it was – and is – to predict the future of Russia. After the collapse of the coup, I was convinced – and said so in my reports for the BBC – that the downfall of the communist dinosaurs, together with the dissolution of the Communist Party after seventy years in power, meant that autocracy was dead in Russia, that centuries of repression would be thrown off and replaced with freedom and democracy. But I was wrong. …Under Putin, Russia returned to its default model of governance – centralised autocracy – and its default mode of behaviour. Such was the animosity arising from the lost decade of the 1990s…”

Gorbachev was more popular in the West than he was at home. In 1992, he spoke from the same podium in Fulton, MO, where Winston Churchill had given his “Iron Curtain” speech forty-six years earlier. History is full of irony. At the time, Charles Krauthammer spoke for the American right about the speech:

“Mikhail Gorbachev is given the Fulton podium from which he declares, to warm applause, that the Cold War was (a) a great misunderstanding and (b) as much our fault as Stalin’s… This was the wrong speech given by the wrong man. It was given by the man who accidentally destroyed communism. It should have been given by someone who intended to, someone like Havel or Walesa or Sharansky or even Yeltsin.”

Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out “the moment of greatest danger for an authoritarian regime is when it begins to reform itself.” Gorbachev learned that lesson too late. A good read for those interested in Cold World psychology and history.

[Cropredy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books that cover the entire Cold War from 1945 to 1991 (with of course, the obligatory epilogue about Putin's Russia) are going to be lengthy. They often can be tendentiousness and sporadically interesting, depending on how much you already know about the subject.

My wife and I attended a talk by the author at the 2022 Chalke Valley History Festival where he enthralled the audience with some fascinating anecdotes from the height of the Cold War, including some about Stalin. He also played TV clips from the Nixon-Khrushchev "Kitchen Debate" in 1959. So enthralling, my wife bought the book.

Well, 550 pages later, I can say that the tidbits offered at the talk were the highlights and the rest of the book , while not tendentiousness, was only moderately interesting.

The book's lens is to look at the psychology of the Cold War from each side. For the Soviets, extreme paranoia dominated the thinking. Despite professing wanting peace, the Soviets could only see every Western action as threatening - as that what paranoia does to one's mindset. Hence, various actions were taken by the Soviets to counter the perceived threat and this in turn caused the West to run its own narrative that there were Communists everywhere and the western way of life was under constant threat. The West had its own ideologues (McCarthy, John Birchers, etc) which contributed to the West's paranoia. These psychological blinders prevented each side from ratcheting the tension downwards, instead, an arms, space, and influence race was on.

Sixsmith, who is a journalist with a long track record of observation in the Soviet Union, tells a mostly chronological tale of the Cold War with certain events highlighted, then explained or rationalized by academic research on human behavior. A few chapters are thematic on how religion, music, and literature were used as "weapons" to influence the other side.

Sixsmith makes an attempt (mostly in the first 1/3 of the book) to try and convince the western reader that the Soviets had a point and if only the Americans had understood it better at the policy makers' level, that perhaps there would have been no Cold War or it would have ended earlier. For example, the Americans could have helped Russia rebuild after WW II. But, this argument is half-hearted and mostly abandoned later on as it was clear each side was entrenched in its way of thinking - and that the Cold War would go on until one side or the other collapsed internally (as, of course it did for the Soviets and Warsaw Pact - spurred by Gorbachev's reforms).

Had this book been written before Putin annexed Ukraine and set up satellites in eastern Donbas in 2014, the book could be taken as a purely historical work told through the psychological viewfinder. But, it was written just before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and as such, understanding the Russian way of thinking (paranoia and imperial) is more true now than it has been since 1991. Sixsmith, to his credit, wouldn't argue that the invasion of Ukraine is a defensible action by Putin, but he would argue that NATO expansion in eastern Europe would, given Russian paranoia (which dates back to the raids and subjugation by the Mongol Horde) be seen as provocative and needing countering - no matter how much we see NATO as a defensive alliance.

Should you read this book? Yes, if you want a fairly even-handed telling of how each side thought and perceived the other side through various key events of the Cold War. The transition from Stalin to Khrushchev is well-told. Whether you lived through the Cold War (as I did) or did not - this book would be useful - though it is not per se a history of the Cold War so look elsewhere if you want a straight history.

Both Western and Russian/Warsaw Pact sources are used throughout. There are interesting photos sprinkled through the chapters. No maps.

I gave it only 3 stars because I don't really like books that cover such a sweep of time that are coerced into the framework of a particular social science (psychology) discipline to explain the narrative. This doesn't mean I'm not intellectually curious and I appreciated the author's arguments - just that it didn't make for interesting reading. Someone more well-read in social science might enjoy the book's points more than I.

[JS Found · Rating 5 out of 5]

The premise of this history is simple--and yet I hadn't read a book like it before. We spend a lot of time on the politics, the wars, the economics of history, without delving into the psychology of the period. How all of the above made people feel in their hearts and especially in their fears.

So comes Martin Sixsmith who writes a psychological history of the Cold War. He doesn't just persuasively psychoanalyze the major players of the Cold War--the American presidents, the Russian general secretaries--but he also ably depicts the overall mood of fear and anxiety that pervaded both cultures. Which led to significant misunderstandings that perpetuated the Cold War. This book is about how consistently a country can get wrong the actions of its mirror. And the US and the Soviet Union WERE mirror societies, their ideologies and culture dependent in the negative sense on the other.

For years, I've had a thought experiment: What would the US been like, and what would it be now, if the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution never happened? How progressive would the United States be? The Cold War gave power and excuse for authoritarians in the United States to take away Americans' rights. It formed the core of the Republican Party, and when it ended, the GOP had little idea what to do with itself and so became more extremist and antidemocratic, results we're in the thick of today.

Reading about Stalin here, I easily thought of Donald Trump. That same level of narcissism, insecurity, and indifference to the suffering of others. Then his aides deathly afraid to tell him the truth, a dynamic repeated in the Trump Administration. And we get a good psych profile of Russia that explains Putin's horrendous actions today, without excusing them. The Cold War still is influencing the politics and culture of today.

[Adrian]

A study of the psychology of Cold War politics applied to leaders and peoples of the two sides. Sixsmith brings a different perspective having grown up in Russia which doesn't lead him astray too often. His thesis is that each side was unable to judge the action of the other except by their preconceived notion of how they should act. Sixsmith's take on some leaders is fresh. He pegs Churchill as a manic depressive and Truman as prone to making fast decisions. I think he's excellent on Khrushchev and how a chance for rapprochement was lost after the death of Stalin. Other top sections include the rise and fall of the Soviet space program and the relationship developed between Reagan and Gorbachev. I appreciated his analysis on how the Stazi warped the psychology of East Germany's people. His Russian bias lets him down a bit at the end. Apparently Russia's route in finding its way back to dictatorship under Putin was the West's fault. They should have bankrolled a Russian recovery. The fact the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia made their way towards democratic government after the collapse of communism doesn't factor. This is mostly very interesting history.

[David Macdonald]

I grew up as a preteen and a teenager in the Cold War Germany of the 1980s. My father was an officer in the Canadian Forces and in 1983 was posted to Germany. That would turn out to be one of the most dangerous years in the 40 years of the Cold War, rivaling the fearful days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Nearly 40 years on, and tensions in Ukraine and other hotspots around the world, this book by Martin Sixsmith walks us through both chronologically and thematically the psychological roots of the "conflict" and the importance of understanding confirmation bias in multi-cultural international relations.

Highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to understand today's geopolitical challenges.

[James Baird · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliantly researched and articulated account of the Cold War and Russia’s development from the Stalin era to the takeover by Putin. Sixsmith had all the historical, political and socio-economic knowledge, not least because he was there as a journalist witnessing the latter stages of events. But what really differentiated this book for me was his consideration of many sociological and psychological theories in order to contextualise and diagnose the motivations and causality underlying the actions and perspectives of the various individuals and collectives that drive events. A fantastically considered and thoughtful account that is written engagingly without unnecessary clutter, distraction or ornament.

[Andrew Pratley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent history of the Cold War. I had studied it as part of my degree some years ago so I was familiar with the subject. This book with the benefit of hindsight & new research updates the story. Martin Sixsmith being a journalist among other things has written a very accessible book which should have a wide readership. He concentrates quite rightly in my view on the physiological aspects of the conflict which had a big part to play in both the East & the West. There are many lessons that can be derived from this book making it a very highly recommended read especially for the non-specialist. For those who are seeking to study the conflict & the period is an excellent introduction.

[George Mack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is quite informative, as it discusses a lot of unknown details of the cold war that the average person would not have known. It is also very insightful as it describes a lot of exchanges between the cold war nations, one of my favourites is the conversations between President Nixon and Khrushchev.
The book also delves into particulary unique topics, typically ignored in a normal political history book. Such chapters on cultural changes in music and the arts are interesting. Mr Sixsmith is a gifted historian/writer, as reading his books are throughly enjoyable, you also notice how fast time flies by once you are in indulged in a great work of words.

[Colin Maclennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book very interesting. It is quite long and goes into considerable detail, but does much to explain the rise of Putin. The Cold War spanned most of my adult years, so it is profoundly interesting to look back over these years, and especially the Reagan/Thatcher time and how Gorbachev tried to reduce the risk of war by reforming the Communist system, but got no help from the West. George HW Bush’s view was quite simple. “The Cold War is over and we won!”. Well, “ the end of history” did not stay ended for long! Gorbachev was reviled in Russia for wrecking the Communist system which gave people the only security they had ever known. And so on to Putin.

[Gonzaga Escauriaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es superinteresante porque relata con detalle y desde muchos ángulos las relaciones de la URSS y los Estados Unidos durante la guerra fría.
Está muy bien documentado y muy bien narrado. El único inconveniente es que es un poco largo. Se detiene demasiado en detalles que no aportan nada nuevo pero que simplemente repite las mismas cosas dichas por gente diferente pero con el mismo sentido.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely informative book that covered several interesting angles I’ve never thought of, including double think and the influence of religion and music. A really enjoyable read that was soul nourishing!

[Chy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a monster of a book that I admittedly skimmed through only reading the chapters that interested me. With that said though I thought this was both well researched and well written offering a glimpse into the cold war era.

[Ting · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a long one. I started to get into the groove from the 2nd half of the book. Very insightful even for today's geo-politics. I like how the author looked like the cold war mind from all aspects, including art, music even jokes.

[Tlazeni Citlalli · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book that analyzes the Cold War not from the military or political point of view but from the psychological one. With an interesting and easy narrative it explains how this conflict shaped the mentalities and the society on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

As fun as academic works get. Insightful, and possibly groundbreaking.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thought-provoking examination of the Cold War.

[Judith Bowen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book. The foibles and misjudgements of world leaders as described in the book are mind blowing. World stupidity without goodwill

[Jordan Maloney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super thorough. Great read.

[Ishan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool book interesting history

[Samantha Watkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very relevant read in 2025 for sure.

[Izabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

such a goated history book and on one of my fav periods i loveeee cold war i cannot help it 😜
so many cool facts i did not know and also liked the psychology angle bc i also study it

[Stefan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange book. Some very interesting content. But, it's not always interesting for the reason Sixsmith notes -- I often found myself thinking, "Why didn't you explore that more? Put it into better context." It was like reading the longest final dissertation from an undergrad, or a MA thesis that hadn't quite stuck the landing.

[Jacqueline Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good insight into the deep seated animosity between east and west and the lost advantages to rebuild this relationship. If we don't understand our past we will never develop our future.