Masterly, a book of resounding importance for appraising our global future as well as understanding our past. A masterful survey that will set the standard for Cold War scholarship for years to come. As Germany and then Japan surrendered in 1945, there was tremendous hope that a new and much better world could be created from the moral and physical ruins of the conflict. Instead, the combination of the huge power of the USA and USSR and the near-total collapse of most of their rivals created a unique, grim new environment: the Cold War. For over forty years, the demands of the Cold War shaped the life of almost all of us. There was no part of the world where East and West did not, ultimately, demand a blind and absolute allegiance.