The Atlantic and Its Enemies

Further Reading

Richard Pipes, in his two-volume Russian Revolution, had the good idea of naming the hundred essential books. My own list, with inevitable injustice, is even more of a thimble in an ocean. For general accounts, there are Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes (1994), which is excellent on the troubles of capitalism, and Paul Johnson, Modern Times (1983), excellent on the troubles of Communism. In both books there is much with which creative disagreement happens. Obviously the uses of technology are enormously important in the making of this period, and it would be easy to list two-dimensional works of praise. They should be put in the context of David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old (2006), which shows that ‘modernism’ is not what it purports to be.

As a general account of the Cold War, I have mainly used a splendid French account, Georges-Henri Soutou’s La Guerre de Cinquante Ans (2001), but another French book, André Fontaine’s Après eux le Déluge, de Kaboul à Sarajevo (1995), covers the last decade or so of Communism, very readably. John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War (2005), is a very efficient survey, and his The Long Peace (1987) bears re-reading, but see also David Reynolds, One World Divisible (2000). The world of arms negotiations was covered in admirable and dogged fashion by Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era (1998).

For the world of 1945, Tony Judt, Postwar (2005), and William I. Hitchcock, The Struggle for Europe (2003), complement each other. I wonder if the Communist takeovers can ever be satisfactorily covered. Vojtech Mastny, in The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity (1996), is too much of a Menshevik Internationalist, but he intuits a great deal. Hugh Seton Watson wrote a book sixty years ago, when he was very young, The East European Revolution (1950), that has never been replaced. The Czechoslovak coup was covered by Karel Kaplan in a very dense book, The Short March (1986). Memoirs of the era, and of course the literature, are probably the best introduction, given that the story line, set in trade union minutes and the like, is not gripping. Nicholas Gage, Eleni (1983), is a superb story, but cf. David Close, The Origins of the Greek Civil War (1995), C. M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece (1991), and Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind (1958). David L. Bark and David Gress, in A History of West Germany (2 vols., 1993), cover everything thoroughly, but there are entertaining memoirs, e.g. Noel Annan, Changing Enemies (1995); see also Wolfgang Benz, Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (3 vols., 1983). Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy (1990), and Jean-Pierre Rioux, La France de la Quatrième République (1980), are very well crafted. I have a considerable weakness for Correlli Barnett, The Lost Victory (1995), as an examination of the sometimes absurd illusions of the British.

The background to the Marshall Plan has been well examined from Western sources. Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan (1989), and from a German perspective Gerd Hardach, Der Marshall Plan (1994), are important. They need to be complemented by Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945-51 (1984), and The European Rescue of the Nation-State (2000). W. Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay (1978), covers the end of European empire, and cf. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars (2007). John Gillingham, European Integration 1950-2003 (2003), builds on the author’s examination of Jean Monnet and his works. Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace (1978), is still useful on American reactions.

On the history of the Soviet Union generally, John Keep, A History of the Soviet Union 1945-1991 (2002), is useful, but see also Amy Knight, Beria (1993). William Taubman, Khrushchev (2003), David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (1994), Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts (1996), Stéphane Courtois, Le Livre noir du communisme (1997), Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (1991), Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao (2006), and Jonathan Fenby, The Penguin History of Modern China (2009), have been my most important sources for the Communist world in the post-war period. Simon Leys, The Chairman’s New Clothes (1971, trans. 1977), is another wonderful book; also, when it appeared, unpopular.

On the end of European empire, see Keith Kyle, Suez (1991), Scott Lucas, Britain and Suez (1996), Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace (1973), Georges Fleury, La Guerre en Algérie (1993), Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall (2000), Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars (1984), and Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle (2 vols., 1993). René Rémond, Le Retour de De Gaulle (1983), is a good summary of the problems of the late Fourth Republic.

‘The Sixties’ is an enormous subject. I have a weakness for Arthur Marwick, The Sixties (1998), but it was devastatingly reviewed by Roger Kimball, whose own contemptuous remarks as to universities were recorded in Tenured Radicals (1990). The same theme, with a very brave attempt to associate it with longer-term factors, comes up in Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Lara V. Marks, Sexual Chemistry (2001), records the emergence of the Pill.

On the political side, see Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life (2003), on JFK, and his Flawed Giant (1999) on Johnson, and Robert E. Quirk, Fidel Castro (1996). Of books on Vietnam, I single out despite very strong competition Michael Lind, Vietnam (2002), Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake (2002), Mark W. Woodruff, Unheralded Victory (1999), and Gabriel Kolko, Vietnam (1986). See also Margaret Macmillan, Nixon and Mao (2007). Jonathan Aitken, Nixon (1993), is sympathetic.

The worldwide inflationary consequences of this era are documented by Harold James, International Financial History in the Twentieth Century (2003), and Barry Eichengreen, The European Economy since 1945 (2007). Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money (2008), is a superb exercise in perspective, with sharp comments as to particular instances of greed and stupidity. Daniel Yergin, The Prize (1992), examines the most important element in the inflationary crisis of the 1970s and has also become a classic.

The counter-attack of the later 1970s and the following capitalist boom of the 1980s are recorded in Arthur Seldon, Capitalism (1990), Edward Luttwak, Turbo-Capitalism (1998), Paul Craig Roberts, The Supply Side Revolution (1984). Andrew Brown, Fishing in Utopia (2008), is a sympathetic account of the failure of the Swedish model. Graham Hancock, Lords of Poverty (1989), attacks the business, or racket, of international aid. It owes much to Peter Bauer, Reality and Rhetoric (1985).

American demonstrations that the welfare system had failed are legion, but see especially Charles Murray, Losing Ground (1984), and Myron Magnet, The Dream and the Nightmare (2000). Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights (1998), are triumphalist.

Chile emerges with Nathaniel Davis, The Last Two Years of Salvador Allende (1985), and Mary Helen Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile (1994); and Turkey in Andrew Mango, The Turks To-day (2004), Nicole Pope and Hugh Pope, Turkey Unveiled (2004), Hamit Bozarslan, La Question kurde (1997), Anne Krueger and Okan Aktan, Swimming against the Tide (1992), and William Hale, Turkish Politics and the Military (1993). A good account is Mehmet Ali Birand, Thirty Hot Days (1985), but we are not spoiled for Turks’ own accounts of their recent history.

For British affairs, we are indeed spoiled. Hugo Young, One of Us (1989), is understanding of Margaret Thatcher’s approach, though at the time he was a considerable critic. Richard Cockett’s Thinking the Unthinkable (1994) is a classic about the IEA. The memoirs of Denis Healey (1989), Nigel Lawson (1992) and of course Margaret Thatcher herself (1993 and 1995) record the era. John Hoskyns’s Just in Time (2000) is a little gem as to what went wrong, right and wrong again. Ferdinand Mount, Mind the Gap (2004), is an immensely thoughtful exercise. Melanie Phillips, All Must Have Prizes (1996), is another on education. In general, Alan Sked, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Post-War Britain (1997), and Richard Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain (2009), can be strongly recommended.

The fate of the eighties ‘revolution’ in the Atlantic world causes head-shaking. The poet of the era is Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), but there are precursors of great power, Radical Chic (1970), The Painted Word (1975), and From Bauhaus to Our House (1981), making mock. For England, Simon Jenkins, Accountable to None (1995), is a brilliant book. David Frum, Dead Right (1995), shows how developments in finance derailed affairs in the USA. By contrast, Lou Cannon, President Reagan (1991), accepts he was wrong about the deficits. Niall Ferguson, Colossus (2005), shakes his head. A very thoughtful account of the USA is John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation (2004). The grubby underside of the 1980s appears in Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker (1989), and Tom Bower, Maxwell (1988), while the strange cultural impoverishment is well displayed by Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation (2002), and Reefer Madness (2004). The thoughtful will find much thought in Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism (1996), Michael Medved, Hollywood vs America (1993), and Robert Hewison, Culture and Consensus (1995). Since the financial upheavals that came with the end of the Reagan era, there have been a great many alarmist and even contemptuous accounts, notably from Paul Krugman, e.g. Peddling Prosperity (1994). Joseph Stiglitz, The Roaring Nineties (2004), has less than the usual problem, of failing to explain why the seventies did not roar. Robert L. Bartley, The Seven Fat Years (1995), is another classic on the Reagan years and what went wrong. Kenneth Hopper and William Hopper, The Puritan Gift (2007), is a splendid demonstration of the fantasy world of the business school. Finally, a work of futurology which, unlike so many, survives: Hamish McRae, The World in 2020 (1994).

On the end of the Cold War, aside from Soutou and Fontaine, cited above, there are good essays on separate subjects. John O’Sullivan, The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister (2006), and Peter Schweizer, Victory (1996), set out the Reagan-Thatcher strategy. On separate theatres there are good books, e.g. Walter Lafeber, Inevitable Revolutions, on US involvement in Central America (1984) and an excellent English account, Simon Strong, Shining Path (1992). It notes the Kurdish connection of the Peruvian Sendero Luminoso. Christopher Kremmer, The Carpet Wars (2003), and Henry S. Bradsher, Afghan Communism and Soviet Intervention (1999), cover the Afghan tragedy. As an Islamic dimension developed, self-pity and resentment emerged with Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), of which there is a stupendous destruction job done by Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing (2006).

For the end of the Soviet bloc, the once sniffed-at Right clearly had the best of things. Vladimir Boukovsky, Jugement à Moscou (1995), is a wonderful book, for some odd reason only partially translated into English. It was based on Politburo documents and much else; see also Evgeny Novikov, Gorbachev and the Collapse of the Soviet Communist Party (1994). There are two further French accounts: Françoise Thom, The Gorbachev Phenomenon (1989), and Alain Besançon, Présent soviétique et passé russe (1980). More conventional accounts are John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (1995), and, by a veteran of sovietology, Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (1996). Another view is Ben Fowkes, The Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1997). Ronald G. Suny, The Soviet Experiment (1998), is important for the nationality dimension. Charles Maier, Dissolution (1998), shows how the end of East Germany was planned from Moscow. Jens Hacker, Deutsche Irrtümer, Schönfärber und Helfershelfer der SED-Diktatur im Westen (1992), and Stefan Wolle, Die heile Welt der Diktatur (1998), show how it had to be done in the teeth of considerable unenthusiasm from West Germany.

Finally, Europe. Its ever-closer union does not make for an interesting story line, and that side of things is best confined to efficient short accounts, such as Michael Maclay, The European Union (1998). European success stories are of course there: Charles Powell, España en democracia 1975-2000 (2001), and John Hooper, The New Spaniards (2006), splendidly discuss the case of Spain. However, other than in the British case, the ‘European’ story is on the whole one of head-shaking and pessimism. Marc Fumaroli, L’Etat culturel (1992), is a brilliant book on the displacement of the old university by an ever-grinning ministry of culture. H.-P. Schwarz, Die gezähmten Deutschen (1985), wonders why German policy is either ‘me, too’ or ‘oh, dear’. Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe (1995), is dismissive of Brussels manoeuvring, and David Marsh, Germany and Europe (1994), shows how very keen the Germans were to have, in the flat turn of speech, a European Germany rather than a German Europe. David Smith, Will Europe Work? (1999), is a good piece of Atlantic scepticism. As to where we all go from here, the latter chapters of Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Money, not greatly interested by Europe, not vastly admiring of the bankers’ role, but very taken up with the relationship of the United States and China, are a very good pointer.