The Fifty Year Wound: The True Price of America's Cold War Victory

Rating:
Summary: Deserves to be read
Review: This is not an objective history of the Cold War. It is crammed with the author's beliefs, but those beliefs are deserving of attention, and many make a lot of sense. I was disturbed by the lack of footnotes for many startling statements, and even when there are footnotes they often are unenlightening in regard to the statements footnoted. Let me illustrate: on page 248 he has a discussion of Red China, and includes the statement that 20 to 43 million lives were lost in Red China between 1959 and 1961. There is no footnote in regard to the statement, and I for one would like a hint of the authority for this statement. I presume the author figures his word should be accepted, but a lot of lesser itmes are footnoted, and it would be helpful if statements such as this were too. On a pickier note, on page 165 Leebaert refers to "Colorado senator William Milliken" whereas those of us who observed the Senate in those days know his name was Eugene Millikin. And It would be nice if there were a footnote for the assertion (page 109) that when Senator Borah died in 1940 his safety-deposit box contained $200,000 in cash--which the author suggests may have come from the Soviets! Allen Weinstein in his book The Haunted Wood tells of Samuel Dickstein, who served in the House from 1923 to 1945, receiving the present-day equivalent of $200,000 from the Soviets, but $200,000 in 1940 would be well over a million dollars in today's money, so this is pretty sensational stuff, but Leebaert just throws this out and someone who wants to know more about it is given no help at all by so much as a footnote. Stuff like that. But the book is a fascinating read, nonetheless, and a lot of what he says may be right.

Rating:
Summary: important story-poorly told
Review: Without understanding the hisory of the cold war you cannot make any sense out of the present state of the nation or of current events such as the disaster of Sept.11. This book attempts to give an overview of this enourmous subject from the end of WWII up until today. It is well referenced and informative and many non-historians would benefit from reading it. The main problem is that the writing is terrible. It reads like a first draft of a book that the author did not have the time or interest to craft into a real book. As such it is simultaneously interesting, informative and frustrating to read.