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The Cold War

Description: The best non-fiction books about the roughly 40-year struggle between the West and the Soviet empire.

Rank Title Author Added

1

We Now Know: rethinking Cold War history

by John Lewis Gaddis

383 members

4 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: Bretzky1

2

The Struggle Against the Bomb : Resisting the Bomb - A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970 (Stanford Nuclear Age)

by Lawrence S. Wittner

19 members

5

Member: aulsmith

3

Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State

by George P. Shultz

212 members

½ 4.4

Member: Bretzky1

4

Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended

by Jack Matlock

116 members

1 review

½ 4.5

Member: Bretzky1

5

The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis

by Ernest R. May

312 members

2 reviews

4.2

Member: Bretzky1

6

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War

188 members

3 reviews

4

Member: Bretzky1

7

A world transformed

by George H. W. Bush

272 members

1 review

3

Member: Bretzky1

8

Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976

by Piero Gleijeses

96 members

1 review

4.2

Member: Bretzky1

9

Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire

by David Remnick

1,456 members

18 reviews

4.2

Member: Bretzky1

10

One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964

by Aleksandr Fursenko

283 members

4 reviews

4

Member: Bretzky1

11

Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin

127 members

2 reviews

½ 4.6

Member: Bretzky1

12

The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB

by Milton Bearden

335 members

3 reviews

4

Member: Bretzky1

13

A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam

by Lewis Sorley

267 members

4 reviews

½ 4.4

Member: Bretzky1

14

The Presidency of George Bush (American Presidency Series)

by John Robert Greene

38 members

1 review

½ 3.7

Member: Bretzky1

15

Butter and Guns: America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy

by Diane B. Kunz

12 members

4

Member: Bretzky1

16

The Secret War against Hanoi

by Richard H. Shultz Jr.

146 members

1 review

4.1

Member: Bretzky1

17

by Scott Douglas Sagan

19 members

½ 4.5

Member: Bretzky1

18

An American Life: The Autobiography

by Ronald Reagan

1,104 members

12 reviews

4

Member: Bretzky1

19

Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself While the Rest of Us Die

by Garrett M. Graff

339 members

8 reviews

3.8

Member: Bretzky1

20

The Line of Fire: From Washington to the Gulf, the Politics and Battles of the New Military

by William J. Crowe, Jr.

51 members

3

Member: Bretzky1

21

Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey: from the OSS to the CIA

by Joseph E. Persico

114 members

½ 4.5

Member: Bretzky1

22

March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present

by Ronald E. Powaski

14 members

3

Member: Bretzky1

23

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times

by George Crile

1,792 members

33 reviews

4

Member: Bretzky1

24

On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War

55 members

½ 3.5

Member: Bretzky1

25

Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War

88 members

3.9

Member: Bretzky1

26

Caveat: Realism, Reagan and Foreign Policy

by Alexander M. Haig Jr.

69 members

1 review

3.2

Member: Bretzky1

27

The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts

by Jussi M. Hanhimäki

39 members

½ 3.7

Member: Bretzky1

28

The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis

by Sheldon M. Stern

54 members

2 reviews

3

Member: Bretzky1

29

Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War

by Frances FitzGerald

214 members

3 reviews

½ 3.7

Member: Bretzky1

30

by Mikhail Gorbachev

171 members

2.9

Member: Bretzky1

31

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

2,805 members

34 reviews

4.2

Member: Bretzky1

32

Deciding to Intervene: The Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy

by James M. Scott

10 members

4

Member: Bretzky1

33

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam

799 members

19 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: Bretzky1

34

by Robert C. McFarlane

26 members

3.8

Member: Bretzky1

35

Learning to Love the Bomb: Canada's Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War

by Sean M. Maloney

24 members

1 review

3.9

Member: Bretzky1

36

Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground

by Jonathan Steele

61 members

3.1

Member: Bretzky1

37

Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

by Victor Sebestyen

300 members

3 reviews

4.2

Member: Bretzky1

38

With Reagan: The Inside Story

by Edwin Meese III

95 members

2.9

Member: Bretzky1

39

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

by Robert F. Kennedy

1,434 members

22 reviews

3.9

Member: Bretzky1

40

The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945 to the Present

by William I. Hitchcock

197 members

3.9

Member: Bretzky1

41

Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Studies on the History of Society and Culture)

by Uta G. Poiger

50 members

½ 3.5

Member: Bretzky1

42

U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada

by John Clearwater

10 members

1 review

3.8

Member: Bretzky1

43

Canadian Nuclear Weapons: The Untold Story of Canada's Cold War Arsenal

by John Clearwater

20 members

1 review

4

Member: Bretzky1

44

Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956

by David Holloway

186 members

2 reviews

4

45

The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War, and Peace, 1989-1992

by III James A. Baker

173 members

½ 2.3

46

High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis

99 members

½ 3.7

47

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: Canadian Involvement Reconsidered

by Peter T. Haydon

7 members

48

Canada in NORAD, 1957-2007: A History (Queen's Policy Studies)

by Joseph T. Jockel

3 members

49

The Culture of the Cold War (The American Moment)

by Stephen J. Whitfield

149 members

1 review

½ 3.3

50

One World Divisible: A Global History Since 1945 (The Global Century Series)

by David Reynolds

134 members

1 review

½ 3.4

51

Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961

by Christina Klein

70 members

1 review

3.1

52

Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security from World War II to the War on Terrorism

by Julian E. Zelizer

70 members

3

53

Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon

by Caspar Weinberger

51 members

3

54

Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union

by Peter Schweizer

92 members

2 reviews

½ 3.7

About This List

Started: Bretzky1
March 2013
Type: Numbered

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