This is an English language bibliography of scholarly books and articles on the Cold War. Because of the extent of the Cold War (in terms of time and scope), the conflict is well documented.
The Cold War () was the global situation from around 1947 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and propaganda campaigns between the Communist World — primarily the Soviet Union and China and their satellite states and allies — and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its NATO allies.
Overviews
Ball, S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991 (1998), British perspective; short summary Boyle Peter G. American-Soviet Relations: From the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism. 1993. The Cambridge History of the Cold War (3 vol. 2010) online Leffler, Melvyn P. and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Volume 1, Origins (2015) 23 essays by leading scholars. excerpt Clarke, Bob. Four Minute Warning: Britain's Cold War (2005) Crockatt Richard. The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991. (1995). popular history Davis, Simon, and Joseph Smith. The A to Z of the Cold War (Scarecrow, 2005), encyclopedia focused on military aspects Friedman, Norman. The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War. (2000) Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (2005), basic summary; Gaddis, John Lewis. Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History 2nd ed. (1990) Gaddis, John Lewis. Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987) Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982) online free to borrow Hoffman, David E. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (2010) House, Jonathan. A Military History of the Cold War, 1944-1962 (2012) excerpt and text search Immerman, Richard H. and Petra Goedde, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (2013) excerpt
Leffler, Melvyn P. and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cambridge History of the Cold War (3 vol, 2010) 2000pp; new essays by leading scholars
Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet insecurity: the Stalin years (1996) online edition Mitchell, George. The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe (2004)
Muschik, Alexander. Headed towards the West: Swedish Neutrality and the German Question, 1945–1972, in: Contemporary European History, 15, 4 (2006), pp. 519–538. Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988)
Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians Stone, Norman. The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War (2010); by leading military historian ; Pulitzer Prize Tucker, Spencer, ed. Encyclopedia of the Cold War: A Political, Social, and Military History (5 vol. 2008), world coverage Walker, Martin. The Cold War: A History (1995), British perspective
Westad, Odd Arne The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (2006) Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2008)
National perspectives
USSR
Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989) Catchpole, Brian. A Map History of Russia (1974), pp 79–117 Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983) Frankel, Benjamin. The Cold War 1945–1991. Vol. 2, Leaders and other important figures in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and the Third World (1992), 379pp of biographies. Friedman, Jeremy. Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (2015) Gilbert, Martin. Routledge Atlas of Russian History (4th ed. 2007) excerpt and text search Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Litai Xue, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993) Gorlizki, Yoram, and Oleg Khlevniuk. Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953 (2004)
Haslam, Jonathan. Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (Yale University Press; 2011) 512 pages Mastny, Vojtech. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (1979) Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (1998) online edition from ACLS E-Books Nation, R. Craig. Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917-1991 (1992) Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (2007) 468pp Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (2004), Pulitzer Prize; Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd ed. (1974) Wettig, Gerhard. Stalin and the Cold War in Europe: The Emergence & Development of East-West Conflict, 1939-1953 (2008) 285p Zubok, Vladislav M. Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (1996) Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007)
United States
Bacevich, Andrew J., ed. The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II (2007) Cummings, Richard H. Radio Free Europe's Crusade for Freedom: Rallying Americans Behind Cold War Broadcasting 1950-1960 (2010) Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War civil rights: Race and the image of American democracy (Princeton UP, 2011). Fernlund, Kevin Jon, ed. The Cold War American West, 1945-1989. University of New Mexico Press, 1998. 222 pp. Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982) Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life (2011). Hogan, Michael J. America in the World: The Historiography of US Foreign Relations since 1941 (1996), scholarly articles reprinted from the journal Diplomatic History Leffler, Melvyn P. For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (2007) Lewis, Adrian R. The American Culture of War: The History of U.S. Military Force from World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom (2006) Offner, Arnold A. Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953 . Stanford UP, 2002). Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988), liberal interpretation Roark, James L. "American Black Leaders: The Response to Colonialism and the Cold War, 1943–1953." African Historical Studies 4.2 (1971): 253–270.
Britain
Anderson Terry H. The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944–1947. (1981) Bullock, Alan. Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945–1951. 1983; he set British policy Clarke, Bob. Four Minute Warning: Britain's Cold War (2005) Clarke, Bob. Britain's Cold War: The Dangerous Decades An Illustrated History (2014) 128pp Deighton Anne. "The 'Frozen Front': The Labour Government, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1947," International Affairs 65, 1987: 449–465. in JSTOR Keeble, Curtis. Britain and the Soviet Union, 1917-89 (1990). Northedge, F.S. Descent From Power British Foreign Policy 1945-1973 (1974) online Taylor, Peter J. Britain and the Cold War: 1945 as geopolitical transition (1993). Young, John W. Winston Churchill's Last Campaign: Britain and the Cold War, 1951-5 Clarendon Press, 1996
Europe
Allen, Debra J. The Oder-Neisse Line: The United States, Poland, and Germany in the Cold War (2003) 309 pp. Borhi, László. Hungary in the Cold War, 1945-1956 (2004) 352 pages Clemens, Clay. Reluctant Realists: The Christian Democrats and West German Ostpolitik, Duke University Press, 1989 Crace, Sylvia E. and John O. Crane. Czechoslovakia: Anvil of the Cold War, 1991 Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, (2005) Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2018) The United States, the Soviet Union and the Geopolitical Implications of the Origins of the Cold War, Anthem Press, London
Naimark, Norman, and Leonid Gibianskii. Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949 (1998) Ninkovich, Frank. Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (1988) Nolte, Ernst. Deutschland und der kalte Krieg () (1974) Sarotte, M.E. Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, Détente & Ostpolitik, 1969-73 The University of North Carolina Press, (2001) Soutou, Georges-Henri. "France and the Cold War, 1944–63." Diplomacy & Statecraft. (2001) 12#4 pp 3–52. Turner, Henry Ashby. Germany from Partition to Reunification (1992) Wall, Irwin. "France in the Cold War" Journal of European Studies (2008) 38#2 pp 121–139.
Latin America
Alegre, Robert F. Railroad radicals in Cold War Mexico: Gender, class, and memory. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013 Berger, Mark T.,Under Northern eyes: Latin American studies and U.S. hegemony in the Americas, 1898-1990. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Brands, Hal, Latin America's Cold War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. Cohn, Deborah N., The Latin American literary boom and U.S. nationalism during the Cold War. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. Crandall, Russell, The United States and Latin America after the Cold War. Cambridge; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008. Darnton, Christopher Neil, Rivalry and alliance politics in cold war Latin America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 Esparza, Marcia, et al., eds. State violence and genocide in Latin America : the Cold War years. London; New York : Routledge, 2010. Fox, Claire F. Making Art Panamerican : Cultural Policy and the Cold War. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2013 Grandin, Greg, The last colonial massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2004. Grow, Michael. U.S. presidents and Latin American interventions: Pursuing regime change in the Cold War. Lawrence, Kan. : University Press of Kansas, 2008. Harmer, Tanya. Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c2011. Iber, Patrick, Neither peace nor freedom: The cultural Cold War in Latin America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2015. Joseph, Gilbert M., et al. eds. Close encounters of empire: writing the cultural history of U.S.-Latin American relations. Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 1998. Joseph, Gilbert M. and Daniela Spenser. In from the cold : Latin America's new encounter with the Cold War. Durham : Duke University Press, 2008. Klein, Herbert & Luna, Francisco. Brazil, 1964-1985: The Military Regimes of Latin America in the Cold War (Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian Regimes). Yale University Press, 2017. McSherry, J. Patrice. Predatory states: Operation Condor and covert war in Latin America. Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. Pettinà, Vanni. A Compact History of Latin America’s Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 2022) See reviews by 5 scholars and reply by Pettina online Pettinà, Vanni. "The shadows of Cold War over Latin America: the US reaction to Fidel Castro's nationalism, 1956–59." Cold War History 11.3 (2011): 317–339. Rabe, Stephen G. The killing zone: The United States wages Cold War in Latin America. New York : Oxford University Press, 2012. Schmidli, William Michael, The fate of freedom elsewhere: human rights and U.S. Cold War policy toward Argentina. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2013. Stites, Jessica, ed. Human rights and transnational solidarity in Cold War Latin America. Madison, Wis. : The University of Wisconsin Press, 2013.
Asia and Pacific
Goscha, Christopher E. & Ostermann, Christian F. (eds.), Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945-1962. (Woodrow Wilson Center Press & Stanford University Press, 2009).