The Cold War

A World History

By: Odd Arne Westad

Narrated by: Julian Elfer

Length: 22 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

In The Cold War, Odd Arne Westad offers a new perspective on a century when a superpower rivalry and an ideological war transformed every corner of our globe. We traditionally think of the Cold War as a post-World War II diplomatic and military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Westad argues that the conflict must be understood as a global ideological confrontation with roots in the industrial revolution and with continuing implications for the world today. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its largest impacts in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Expanding our understanding of the Cold War both geographically and chronologically, Westad offers the definitive new history of an ongoing battle.

©2017 Odd Arne Westad (P)2017 HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books

Good history

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A detailed and exciting account!

loved it. It is a detailed and thorough, but not boring or monotonous, account of an interesting part of relatively modern history. I found the book unbiased and without a political agenda, something increasingly hard to find as of late. The reader is aslo great, keeping a lively and brisk, but unhurried pace.

Excellent narration and easy to understand

This is an excellent overview of the cold war with a great narrator. If you are looking for a good introduction to the cold war, this is a great place to start. This book really helps place the modern world in context.

Interesting overview of Cold War from center-left

Interesting overview of the Cold War, but from a center-left skewed perspective. The tranditional Cold War "villains" (e.g., Stalin, Mao, Brezhnev) are softened and excesses glossed over, while any contribution from Reagan are minimized. Worth a read.

A Thorough, Easy to Understand Overview

Whether you are more academically oriented or a lay-reader, if you wish to improve your understanding of the Cold War or broaden your knowledge of world history from the onset of the 20th century to its end, this is a great book for you. While it is not perfect, at times seeming to emphasize the US, Europe, and East Asia more than a proper "world history" might merit, the author acknowledges early on that a single volume account cannot possibly cover EVERYTHING and I do not feel this detracts from the book's value. It nonetheless does satisfactorily incorporate the histories of South and Latin America, the Middle East, Southern Asia, and Africa into a discussion of the Cold War in a much more comprehensive fashion than I have seen before.

Stylistically, it is written in a very accessible manner and the audiobook format is very listener-friendly. The reader has a good voice, while the writer does not assume you have any expertise. It is very narrative driven, keeping interest by fleshing out key personalities such as Tito, Stalin, and Mao, all while it does not assume you remembered every detail between chapters, giving you the occasional reminder of "who's who" when switching between topics in a very non-condescending way.

I personally am a current university student majoring in History, and came in wanting to expand my knowledge of the Cold War from a more "worldly" perspective, and must say I give it a stamp of approval for that. The book achieves what it sets out to do (inform the layman and inspire further inquiry for students and researchers) while the audiobook gives voice to a book that is already very "conversational" in tone.

Amazing history - Bad audio mastering

This is an excellent history of the cold war that focuses more on global aspects of the conflict than domestic issues in the US or USSR. Its one flaw is that the audio mastering is truly terrible. Quieter in general than almost any other audiobook, the volume levels also have a tendency to jump up and down, as if the narrator was moving closer and farther from the mic, and an engineer didn’t make any attempt to fix it. Setting aside the mastering, The narrator’s performance is good.

Objective and compelling narrative

Highly recommend this book. The narration was a little inaudible (less than perfect studio?) sometimes but the narrative was very compelling and objective.

One of the Best

All the way from the introduction to the conclusion was fabulous. This should be used for University level history class.

excellent survey of relavent periods and players

Very good level of detail and grasp of the subject. It seems that only recently do we have the right perspective, and the author captured it very well.

Critical, grudgingly biased

This was a very enlightening read, and highly contrasted to other books about the Cold War written from American perspective. Coming from the Northern European perspective, this book attempts to outline the effects of the cold war on the entire global structure. It is more critical of American action during the Cold War than say, “The Marshall Plan”.

In fact, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the author is critical of what he considers “American hegemony“ but grudgingly willing to give the devil hates do, even when the devil is the United States. This is most evident in his harsh criticism of McCarthyism which goes on for several pages, compared with his matter of fact mention of the purges and murders of Stalin and Mao. Despite this, is analysis of American successes and failures in the cold war, is hard to refute being very well researched and on the whole balanced and rooted in fact. More poignant is his analysis of the failures of American foreign-policy in the 1990s and 2000‘s, that is in the direct aftermath of theCold War. However, his criticism of Russian developments since the end of the Cold War is even harsher. He makes no bones about calling Vladimir Putin a “jingoist and bigot”