John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War: A New History

It has been almost twenty five years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the forty four year Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. John Lewis Gaddis who is known as the best American Cold War historian wrote the book The Cold War, A New History. His goal in writing the book was to show the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union also known as the (U.S.S.R) throughout the end of the Second World War and to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Gaddis goal in writing this book was for helping his students at Yale University better understand what actually happened during the Cold War, and how it changed the way we live our lives today in a relatively short book. Gaddis says “My students
And in having the so called Cold War we would see who was the more superior country. After reading the book you will know that no country directly attacked the other country because they knew attacking the other country meant you were attacking yourself also know as mutually assured destruction (MAD). This is a main reason why there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers. Gaddis goes on to say in his book “ What never happened, despite universal fears that it might, was a full-scale war involving the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies…For the first time in history no one could be sure of winning, or even surviving, a great war.”(85) He is referring the MAD war because of the destructive power of nuclear weapons in that nobody is safe if a nuclear war broke out and the aggressor would eventually would kill itself because the defender would attack back and eventually led to the destruction of the