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John Gaddis Argument For The Cold War

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The Cold War, by John Lewis Gaddis, is an extremely researched, and stunningly written historical account of the Cold War. Gaddis is the Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. Gaddis is best known for his work on the Cold War. John Lewis Gaddis was born in 1941 in Cotulla, Texas. Gaddis received his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, and has since taught and at multiple universities and has received numerous awards and distinctions. Gaddis won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his biography of George F. Kennan. John Gaddis was born during World War II and grew up experiencing the Cold War first hand in America. Gaddis’ perspective is that of an American historian that has drawn from other Cold War historians as well. …show more content…
Gaddis writes about the roots of the Cold War outside the United States and Soviet Union’s war aims in World War II. Gaddis aims to tackle the larger questions about the Cold War, why major event played out as they did and why the major actors did what they did, why it all started and why it all ended. Gaddis looks at the competing political and economic ideologies between the United States and The Soviet Union, and the unavoidability of the clash of capitalism vs communism. Gaddis writes about how the Cold War came about during World War II, “the war had been won by a coalition whose principal members were already at war- ideologically and geopolitically if not militarily- with one another… The tragedy was this: that victory would require the victors either to cease to be who they were, or to give up much of what they had hoped, by fighting the war, to attain (Gaddis 6)”. Gaddis is referring to the point of the grand alliance of the East and West that was successful in defeating the Nazi’s but could not exist after Germany surrendered due to their different views of politics and economics. Gaddis recounts the Cold War by its themes, rather than by its sequence of events. The chapters do not progress in a direct course from the start of the Cold War to the end. Each chapter fixates on a certain theme that is important in the Cold War, …show more content…
For writing a book on the history of The Cold War in under 300 pages, A New History is not missing key points or one-sided in any direction. Gaddis uses over five-hundred foot notes in his less than three-hundred-page history of the Cold War. The footnotes give good insight about the topics, people and places that are all important to understanding the Cold War. A New History has multiple maps that are helpful in getting a better understanding of the Cold War and all the areas that were involved either directly or indirectly. As for sources used Gaddis uses documents, interviews, books, articles and unpublished materials. All of which is put into these categories in Gaddis’ bibliography. Gaddis uses all types of sources spanning a timeline of over seventy years and over one hundred books. As for contributions to the historiography Gaddis does not offer much new in the sense of having new insights, but rather is a detailed analysis of the “whys” of the Cold War. Gaddis is able to have an encyclopedic knowledge of his sources and uses them to his advantage with perfect quotes and information that makes this book a great source on the Cold

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