The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War

In one of the first comprehensive retellings of the cold war, Norman Friedman offers a broad survey of events from the end of the Second World War to the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He discusses the Korean War, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam War, and so on, not as discrete incidents--as many other books have done--but as interconnected confrontations in a long struggle that had to be fought. The Fifty-Year War is mostly a chronological history, with a special emphasis on cold-war weapons and technology. The bulk of the book focuses on the 1950s and 1960s; the 1980s receive only cursory attention, but they are in some sense the most dramatic, the moments when the cold war would turn suddenly hot. Still, Friedman credits Ronald Reagan with being the right man at the right time to ensure the Soviet Union's defeat. Indeed, the author believes the Communists were plainly beaten: "The West won the cold war. The Soviets did not merely lose interest in the competition. They lost the war, and they paid the usual price of defeat." This is a sound overview of a titanic struggle, especially its early period. --John J. Miller