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Origins of the Cold War - Historical interpretations


ephika

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We read chapters 17 & 19 of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Diplomacy-Touchstone-book-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0671510991

Kissinger is an expert on this, or so I've heard. 17 is about the beginning and therefore discusses causes in general. 19 is on the Korean War and it outlines how things escalated/caused Cold War tensions. We haven't discussed Vietnam yet, but my teacher may give us some of the chapters on that. Look at the table of contents. I'd say maybe 1/3 - 1/2 is tied to it, depending on your perspective.

We also read something from Stoessinger on the Korean War, if you're interested [as a cause of the CW]

My teacher also gave us this book: http://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-History-Documents-Pages/dp/019516637X

It's pretty much all primary documents. It is US-centric, but it ties in the rest of the world.

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we have a great outline in the Oxford Study Course "IB History Paper 2: The Cold War", by Sam Olofsson. Its an oldish edition, and im not sure if its online, but it has a great list of the historiography of the origins of the Cold war and answers every part of the syllabus in a really clear way. We're about halfway through it, and it seems to be very rounded, not at all biased (unlike the heavily biased American textbook we have as well)

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Yeah, John Lewis Gaddis is a good author on the Cold War, although I found the most general one a bit too general, but it does include different interpretations for the origins of the Cold War. I would be rater cautious with using Henry Kissinger as your central author on the Cold War as he himself played an influential role in it, strongly committed to a certain side and might therefore offer slightly biased information. Instead it is very good to read him in order to get a good understanding of how he stood on the issues. It's a bit similar to using Trotsky's account of the Russian revolution as your central guiding book.

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