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Title: Superficial to an extreme
Review: There is a crying need for new histories of the Cold War based on revelations, especially from Soviet sources, but also from declassified American material released since the end of the period. This is not it. Covering the 40+ years in less than 300 pages implies some superficiality, but Gaddis' approach makes the effort essentially worthless. He also has to take the obligatory slap at McCarthy without bothering to admit that "we now know" (the title of another Gaddis work) that declassified material has largely shown that he told the truth and his detractors consistently lied. He then digresses into a ludricrous analysis of nuclear strategy that coincides with no known theory. He has dumbed the entire process down to a horrible degree and the entire enterprise is awash in political correctness.
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