The Columbia Guide to the Cold War

To those who lived through its entire 45 years, the Cold War seemed to go on forever. If not in the same class as the medieval Anglo‐French Hundred Years War, it was continuous and, at one point, the Cuban missile crisis, came close to igniting a nuclear war. Although the television, Hollywood, sports‐loving public chose to ignore it, certainly the politicians and the armed forces (“the military” is the US term) were all too aware of the potential catastrophe that might conceivably ensue. Perhaps its impact was greater in the USA; there the public at large were not as accustomed...