If you require any of these books and articles, then please contact the Island School History Department for copies and help in tracking them down:
Causes of the Cold War
Traditional/Orthodox Accounts - The USSR was to blame, Marxism expansionist, Stalin violated Yalta/Potsdam, US acted defensively
- Bailey, T. (1950). American Faces Russia: Russian-American Relations from Early Times to Our Day. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- Combs, J. (1983). American Diplomatic History: Two Centuries of Changing Interpretations. Berkeley, CA: Uni of California Press.
- Feis, H. (1970). From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950 and (1960) Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference.
- Hertz, M. (1966). Beginnings of the Cold War. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
- Kennan, G. (1947). The Sources of Soviet Conduct. Foreign Affairs, 12(Spring), 583.
- Kennan, G. (1951). American Diplomacy 1900-1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- McNeill, W.H. (1953). America, Britain and Russia: Their Co-operation and Conflict, 1941-1946. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Schlesinger, A. (1967). Origins of the Cold War, Foreign Affairs, 46(1), 22-52.
Revisionist - USA was to blame, foreign policy was expansionist, wanted new markets, US underestimated Stalin's need for security
Post-Revisionist Accounts - Neither solely to blame, both had misconceptions
Post-Cold War/New History Accounts
- Alperovitz, G. (1965). Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. New York: Vintage Books.
- Fleming, D.F. (1961). The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960. New York: Doubleday.
- Kolko, J., & Kolko, G. (1972). The Limits of Power: The World and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945-1954. New York: Harper & Row.
- LeFeber, W. (1991). America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945-1990 (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
- McCormick, T. J. (1989). Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War. Baltimore, MA: John Hopkins University Press.
- Williams, W.A. (1962). The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (rev. ed.). New York: Delta Books.
Post-Revisionist Accounts - Neither solely to blame, both had misconceptions
- Gaddis, J.L. (1972). The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Herring, G. (1973). Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, and the Origins of the Cold War.
- Leffler, M. P. (1992). A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War. Stanford: Stanford Uni.
- Lundestad, G. (1986). Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945-1952. Journal of Peace Research, 23, 263-277.
- Paterson, T.G. (1973). Soviet-American Confrontation: Post-war Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War. Baltimore: John Hopkins.
- Trachtenberg, M. (1999). A Contested Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963.
- Yergin, D. (1980). Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. London: Penguin.
Post-Cold War/New History Accounts
- Gaddis, J.L. (1997). What Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History.
- Westad, O.A. (2010). Cambridge History of the Cold War.
- Zubok, V., & Pleshakov, C. (1997). Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev.
Sino-Soviet Split
The Korean War
USA and the War
South Korea and the War
Russia and the War
China and the War
- Matray, J. (1985). The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea, 1941-1950. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
- Paige, G. (1968). The Korean Decision, June 24-30. New York: Free Press.
South Korea and the War
- Allen, R. (1960). Syngman Rhee: An Unauthorised Portrait. Rutland, VT: Tuttle.
- Chi-Young, P. (1980). Political Opposition in Korea, 1945-1960. Seoul: Seoul National University Press.
- Dae-Sook, S. (1967). The Korean Communist Movement, 1918-1948. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Joung-Won, K. (1975). The Politics of Development, 1945-1972. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Russia and the War
- Goncharov, S., Lewis, J., & Litai, X. (1993). Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- O'Neil, M. (1996). The Other Side of the Yalu: Soviet Pilots in the Korean War. Ph.D. Diss. Florida State University.
- Ree, E. (1988). Socialism in One Zone: Stalin's Policy in Korea, 1945-1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Simmons, R. (1975). The Strained Alliance: Peking, Pyongyang, Moscow, and the Politics of the Korean War. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Zubok, V., & Pleshakov, C. (1996). Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
China and the War
- Harding, H., & Ming, Y. (1989). Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.
- Jian, C. (1994). China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of Sino-American Confrontation. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Shu-gang, Z. (1995). Mao's Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950-53. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
The Vietnam War
Radical - US involvement in Vietnam the result of America's pursuit of global (economic & ideological) hegemony during the Cold War
Liberal - US involvement in Vietnam the result of good anti-communist intentions gone awry
Liberal Realist - US involvement in Vietnam mainly due to a misapplication of containment, could have been avoided
Neo-Conservative - US involvement in Vietnam was necessary and unavoidable, but military methods used were counter-productive
- Kolko, G. (1985). Anatomy of War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon Books.
- McCormick, T.J. (1989). America's Half Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Liberal - US involvement in Vietnam the result of good anti-communist intentions gone awry
- Schlesinger, A. (1967). The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- Gelb, L., & Betts, R. (1980). The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked. Brookings Institution Press. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
- Halberstam, D. (1964). The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. New York: Random House.
- Halberstam, D. (1972). The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House.
- Kaiser, D. (2002). American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Liberal Realist - US involvement in Vietnam mainly due to a misapplication of containment, could have been avoided
- Herring, G. (2013). America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
- McNamara, R., & VanDeMark, B. (1996). In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Vintage Books.
Neo-Conservative - US involvement in Vietnam was necessary and unavoidable, but military methods used were counter-productive
- Lewy, G. (1980). America in Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Lind, M. (2002). Vietnam: The Necessary War - A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict. New York: Free Press.
- Podhoretz, N. (1982). Why We Were in Vietnam. New York: Simon & Schuster.
End of the Cold War
Orthodox/Triumphalist/Insider Narratives - Focus on the Role of the USA and its Leaders in Ending the War/US Victory
Revisionist - Focus on Transnational Movements, Economic Conditions and other Domestic Factors
Post-Revisionist - A Conjunction of the Role of Leaders and Longer-Term Domestic Trends, Less focus on Macro-Level
- Bush, G.W., & Scowcroft, B. (1998). A World Transformed. New York: Knopf.
- Gates, R. (1997). From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. Simon & Schuster.
- Shultz, G.P. (1993). Turmoil and Triumph: Diplomacy, Power, and the Victory of the American Deal. Scribner.
- Winik, J. (1996). On the Brink: The Dramatic Behind the Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women who Won the Cold War. Simon & Schuster.
- Zelikow, P. & Rice, C. (1997). Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft. Harvard University Press.
Revisionist - Focus on Transnational Movements, Economic Conditions and other Domestic Factors
- Gaddis, J.L. (1994). The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations. Oxford University Press.
- Hogan, M.J. (1992). The End of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Wallerstein, I. (2003). The Decline of American Power: The US in a Chaotic World. New York: New Press.
Post-Revisionist - A Conjunction of the Role of Leaders and Longer-Term Domestic Trends, Less focus on Macro-Level
- Craig, C., & Logevall, F. (2009). America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity. Belknap Press.
- FitzGerald, F. (2000). Way out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War. Simon & Schuster.
- Gaddis, J.L. (2005). Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War. Oxford University Press.
- Maynard, C. (2008). Out of the Shadow: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War. Texas A&M University Press.
- Oberdorfer, D. (1998). From the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983-1991. John Hopkins University Press.