Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 340
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4422-1984-7 • Hardback • December 2014 • $144.00 • (£111.00)
978-1-4422-1985-4 • Paperback • December 2014 • $62.00 • (£48.00)
978-1-4422-1986-1 • eBook • December 2014 • $58.50 • (£45.00)
Mark Gilbert is resident professor of international history at SAIS Europe, the Bologna Center of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He is the 2018 Chair of Jury for the Cundill History Prize.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: From War to Cold War
Chapter 3: Stalinization
Chapter 4: Creating the West
Chapter 5: 1956: Communism in Turmoil
Chapter 6: The Berlin Crisis
Chapter 7: Really Existing Socialism
Chapter 8: The Reluctant Ally
Chapter 9: Détente and Solidarity
Chapter 10: Reluctant Allies
Chapter 11: 1989: The Year of Revolutions
Chapter 12: Unifications and Dissolutions
The inhabitants of the ‘common European house’ seem once again to be dividing into two camps: those who live in free, prosperous and secure societies, and those who are subject to manipulation, repression and, above all, neglect. In that context, Mark Gilbert’s concise history of how Europe lived through the Cold War and its end from 1945 to 1992 provides a welcome opportunity to refresh recollections and reflect on parallels and differences. . . .Along the way, Gilbert skilfully develops a few major themes. . . with an eye for gripping detail.
— Survival: Global Politics and Strategy
The book illuminates an important and sometimes forgotten aspect of the conflict. . . . Gilbert’s analysis demonstrates the centrality of European actors to a variety of Cold War events.
— Journal of Contemporary History
Mark Gilbert writes with clarity and verve, and the story he tells is a dramatic, Europe-wide one that embraces both Western and Eastern European countries. This allows him to reveal the deeper social and economic layers of the Cold War conflict as it played out across the continent, on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
— Anne Deighton, University of Oxford
In this valuable account of the Cold War as European history, Mark Gilbert provides a crisp introduction to the politics of European governments and parties— East and West—in a divided continent. Thus he retrieves, and reclaims, the Europeans’ own agency in the Cold War—for good and bad. The paradoxical conclusion of this wide-ranging international history of politics is that the historic defeat of Soviet communism is ultimately premised on economics, on the superior efficacy of capitalism upon the socialist command economy.
— Federico Romero, European University Institute
This outstanding overview of the huge and complex history of the Cold War puts Europe back where it belongs, at its very center, as this was not a bipolar contest between two superpowers. With immense erudition, Mark Gilbert presents a beautiful narrative and well-balanced analysis, giving due importance to actors and developments on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Gilbert brings events to life in snapshots, with colorful references to films, novels, and art that capture the essence of this huge ideological conflict. A powerful evocation of an era.
— Beatrice Heuser, University of Reading
Provides a comprehensive discussion of the Cold War’s impact across Europe
Analyzes the collapse of the communist system
Presents a political history of Europe’s Cold War, not a history of the Cold War in Europe seen from the perspectives of the two superpowers
Features Europeans as protagonists
Written in a fast-paced and accessible style
Blends political, intellectual, and social history