How has it happened that the United States and the Soviet Union have managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War confrontation without going to war with one another? Historian John Lewis Gaddis suggests answer to this and other vital questions about post-war diplomacy in this new book. Gaddis uses recently declassified American and British documents to explore several key issues in Cold War history that remain unresolved: Precisely what itwas 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? What led the Truman administration first to endorse, but then immediately to avoid American military involvement on the mainland of Asia? This is a provocative exercise in contemporary history, certain to generate new insights on both past and present aspects of the age we live in.

`However circumscribed the tropics, Gaddis manages to infuse into each one a richness of association, of apposite generalization, which lifts them beyond the level of standart academic treatment. he is revealed above all as a highly rational and liberal-minded observer, a sharp dissector of human folly, who is yet quick to appreciate strengths where they are to be found ^times higher education-august 1988
'Gaddis writes superbly well, no mean task when mixing narrative, analysis, personal reflection and advocacy ... Gaddis' powers of synthesis are, as ever, most impressive of all.' The Washington Post
'Gaddis raises some interesting and timely questions ... This provocative and well-argued work is recommended' Library Journal

John Lewis Gaddis, Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio University, is the author of The United States and the Origins of the Cold War and Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy.