Understanding the Cold War: A Historian's Personal Reflections

This is the story of a man and an epoch. Its telling moves between detailed personal history and an assessment of the origins, significant events, and outcome of the Cold War. Professor Ulam describes his hometown, family, and early education, as well as his departure, with his brother, for the US just days before the Nazi invasion of Poland would have trapped them. Then follows reminiscences of his college and Harvard years, and thoughts as an acknowledged expert on Soviet affairs. The volume offers basic anecdotes to simplistic explanations. Whether discussing the Kirov assination or the Moscow Trials of the so-called Trotsyist Bloc, or the nationalist basis of disputes between China and Russia during the Vietnam War period, Ulam aims to avoid the sensational and the speculative in favour of the empirical and the evidentiary.