For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War

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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Drawing on extensive research in American and Soviet archives, Bancroft Prize–winner Leffler (A Preponderance of Power) offers a scintillating account of the forces that constrained Soviet and American leaders in the second half of the 20th century. Leffler begins by admitting that he was shocked by the rapid demise of communism. If Reagan and Gorbachev could end the Cold War, why hadn't earlier leaders been able to do so? To answer that question, Leffler examines five crucial moments when Washington and Moscow thought about avoiding or modulating the extreme tension between them. At the end of WWII, Leffler says, Stalin thought that cooperation with the West might be preferable to entrenched hostility. Yet he and Truman were pressed by an international order that engendered... fear to make decisions that led to Cold War and shaped policy for decades. Leffler examines why Eisenhower and Malenkov couldn't wipe the slate clean after Stalin's death; how Khrushchev, Kennedy and Johnson reacted to the pressures of international allies and domestic political enemies; why détente foundered under Carter and Brezhnev, and what circumstances allowed leaders of the 1980s to focus on common interests rather than differences. Leffler has produced possibly the most readable and insightful study of the Cold War yet. 47 b&w illus., 6 maps. (Sept.)
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From Booklist
After five decades of constant tension, three "hot" wars, numerous surrogate wars, and a near Armageddon over Cuba, the cold war ended, not with a bang but a whimper. Faster than anyone could have expected (or hoped), the Soviet economy came close to implosion, while satellites in Eastern Europe broke free, with virtual Soviet acquiescence. So it is left to historians to consider why the cold war began, why it endured, and why it ended. Professor Leffler has the benefit of almost two decades of hindsight as well as access to recently declassified American and Soviet documents. The result is a series of fresh and often provocative perspectives on the struggle. But Leffler is no dogmatic revisionist with an ideological ax to grind. He lays the causes of the conflict on the totalitarian monstrosity created by Stalin in which a mixture of hostility and paranoia was hardwired into the system. However, he does not view the length of the struggle as inevitable. Critics will find much to dispute here, particularly Leffler's focus on the personal qualities of leaders. Freeman, Jay

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