Ten years ago, a book about the cold war would, in the words of historian Vladislav Zubok, have been a record of “dangerous but ancient times”. Today, with the US again locked in rivalry with Russia and China, and phrases such as “sphere of influence” and “proxy war” back in common use, it is actually the three-decade holiday from great power confrontation that followed the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall that now seems to be the anomaly in need of an explanation.  

The Cold War, Zubok’s monumental and still highly readable history of the US-USSR confrontation period, explores how that conflict not only shaped the post-1945 world but also the parallels with the “new world disorder” emerging today.

Much of the ground — the flashpoints from Berlin to Cuba to Vietnam — may have been well covered. But the interpretations — particularly how the cold war began and how it ended — are still being pursued by rival camps of experts. And, by smartly knitting together the past with the present, Zubok’s book brings a prescient and fresh perspective.