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"For fifty years the Cold War shaped our lives and divided our world, and its influence will be felt for decades to come. While other authors have portrayed the period as an uneasy "peace" enforced by mutually assured destruction via atomic and nuclear weapons, Norman Friedman dashes the prevailing notion that the Cold War was but a loose succession of related events and shows instead that it was World War III, conducted at a much slower pace than a hot war and allowing for the enduring technological, cultural, and social effects of the past five decades. Friedman is the first to amalgamate geopolitics with the technical and military developments of the last fifty years. Avoiding the trap of blaming it all on ideology, he connects each side's politico-military strategy and central defining character. Among the many questions he discusses are: Was it communism versus capitalism or just old-fashioned Russian imperialism cloaked in a largely irrelevant ideology? Did the West win or did inherent flaws doom the Soviet system from the start?"--Jacket.