The Cold War's Killing Fields

Rethinking the Long Peace

By: Paul Thomas Chamberlin

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

A brilliant young historian offers a vital, comprehensive international military history of the Cold War in which he views the decade-long superpower struggles as one of the three great conflicts of the twentieth century alongside the two World Wars, and reveals how bloody the ""Long Peace"" actually was.

In this sweeping, deeply researched book, Paul Thomas Chamberlin boldly argues that the Cold War, long viewed as a mostly peaceful, if tense, diplomatic standoff between democracy and communism, was actually a part of a vast, deadly conflict that killed millions on battlegrounds across the postcolonial world. For half a century, as an uneasy peace hung over Europe, ferocious proxy wars raged in the Cold War’s killing fields, resulting in more than fourteen million dead—victims who remain largely forgotten and all but lost to history.

A superb work of scholarship, The Cold War’s Killing Fields is the first global military history of this superpower conflict and the first full accounting of its devastating impact. More than previous armed conflicts, the wars of the post-1945 era ravaged civilians across vast stretches of territory, from Korea and Vietnam to Bangladesh and Afghanistan to Iraq and Lebanon. Chamberlin provides an understanding of this sweeping history from the ground up and offers a moving portrait of human suffering, capturing the voices of those who experienced the brutal warfare.

Chamberlin reframes this era in global history and explores in detail the numerous battles fought to prevent nuclear war, bolster the strategic hegemony of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and determine the fate of societies throughout the Third World.

Neglected scholarship on the Cold War

I enjoyed this book, and was enlightened by a lot of the research the author had done on actions/campaigns in the peripheral states during the Cold War. Material that's generally overlooked, but shouldn't be.

Ai pauses are distracting

The story is very good. But…the AI reader treats every Dr. as the end of a sentence. In a book about medicine this is terribly annoying.

Excellent Book on Neglected Conflicts

Chamberlain does an excellent job in arguing that the concept of the Cold War as a "long peace" is only true in terms of direct super power conflict. In fact, the nearly 50 years of the Cold War witnessed the deaths of perhaps 20 million people, many of them civilians, in conflicts in Asia and the Middle East (though the book has little to say about Africa).While perceived through the Cold War lens of competion between the superpowers in Moscow and Washington, these conflicts from Korea, to Vietnam, to Iran-Iraq and Lebanon, each conflict had its own local Origins and meanings to participants. The author also does an effective job of tracing the emergence of more recent phenomena like the re-emergence of a multi-polar world (with a very useful discussion of China) and radical religious and social movements back into the Cold War era which did much to create them. Chamberlin also excels at demonstrating the frequently high human cost, especially to civilians, in the three eras of Cold War conflict on which he focuses. Highly recommended for those with an interest in contemporary military, social, and diplomatic history.

Excellent narration of a great story!

I've listened to Grover Gardner before on Audible, and he does a fantastic job here in narrating the tale of Cold War-era conflict. The writing and research that went into this are also superb, and I recommend this highly to anyone interested in learning more about the role of political violence in the second half of the 20th century.

Outstanding History of late 20th Century

Superlatively clear and organized overview of major proxy conflicts of the Cold War. Stands out for its handling of conflicts like Lebanon and the India-Pakistan war which can be usefully placed in the context of superpower conflicts.