Background
Gaddis, John Lewis was born on April 2, 1941 in Cotulla, Texas, United States.
(The Cold War ended with an exhilarating wave of events: t...)
The Cold War ended with an exhilarating wave of events: the toppling of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the dissident poet Vaclav Havel, the revolution in Romania. Americans rejoiced at the dramatic conclusion of the long struggle. "But victories in wars--hot or cold--tend to unfocus the mind," writes John Gaddis. "It can be a dangerous thing to have achieved one's objectives, because one then has to decide what to do next." In The United States and the End of the Cold War, Gaddis provides a sharp focus on the long history of the Cold War, shedding new light on its sudden ending, as well as on what might come next. In this provocative, insightful book, Gaddis offers a number of thoughtful essays on the history of international relations during the last half century. His reassessments of important figures and themes from the Cold War are sometimes surprising. For example, he portrays John Foster Dulles and Ronald Reagan as far more flexible and perceptive statesmen than the missile-toting caricatures depicted in editorial cartoons. And he takes a second look at the importance of espionage and intelligence in Cold War history, a field often left to buffs and spy novelists. Most important, he focuses on the central elements in superpower relations. In an eloquent account of the American style of foreign policy in the twentieth century, for instance, he explores how Americans (having learned the lesson of Adolf Hitler) consistently equated the forms of foreign governments with their external behavior, assuming that authoritarian states would be aggressive states. He also analyzes the "tectonics" of Cold War history, demonstrating how long term changes in international affairs and Soviet bloc countries built up pressures that led to the sudden earthquakes of 1989. And along the way, Gaddis illuminates such topics as the role of morality in American foreign policy, the relevance of nuclear weapons to the balance of power, and the objectives of containment. He even includes (and criticizes) an essay entitled, "How the Cold War Might End," written before the dramatic events of recent years, to demonstrate how quickly the tide of history can overwhelm contemporary analysis. Gaddis concludes with a thoughtful consideration of the problems and forces at work in the post-Cold War world. Author of such works as The Long Peace and Strategies of Containment, John Lewis Gaddis is one of the leading authorities on postwar American foreign policy. In these perceptive, highly readable essays, he provides a fresh assessment of the evolution of the Cold War, and insight into the shape of things to come.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195085515/?tag=2022091-20
(We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History We Now Know: Ret...)
We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis ( Author ) Paperback Jul- 1998 Paperback Jul- 09- 1998
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009KJ8K2C/?tag=2022091-20
(The “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) no...)
The “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in its drama, The Cold War stands as a triumphant summation of the era that, more than any other, shaped our own.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143038273/?tag=2022091-20
( This book moves beyond the focus on economic considerat...)
This book moves beyond the focus on economic considerations that was central to the work of New Left historians, examining the many other forces -- domestic politics, bureaucratic inertia, quirks of personality, and perceptions of Soviet intentions -- that influenced key decision makers in Washington.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/023112239X/?tag=2022091-20
(What is history and why should we study it? Is there such...)
What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today. Gaddis points out that while the historical method is more sophisticated than most historians realize, it doesn't require unintelligible prose to explain. Like cartographers mapping landscapes, historians represent what they can never replicate. In doing so, they combine the techniques of artists, geologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists. Their approaches parallel, in intriguing ways, the new sciences of chaos, complexity, and criticality. They don't much resemble what happens in the social sciences, where the pursuit of independent variables functioning with static systems seems increasingly divorced from the world as we know it. So who's really being scientific and who isn't? This question too is one Gaddis explores, in ways that are certain to spark interdisciplinary controversy. Written in the tradition of Marc Bloch and E.H. Carr, The Landscape of History is at once an engaging introduction to the historical method for beginners, a powerful reaffirmation of it for practitioners, a startling challenge to social scientists, and an effective skewering of post-modernist claims that we can't know anything at all about the past. It will be essential reading for anyone who reads, writes, teaches, or cares about history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195171578/?tag=2022091-20
(In this fascinating new interpretation of Cold War histor...)
In this fascinating new interpretation of Cold War history, John Lewis Gaddis focuses on how the United States and the Soviet Union have managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War confrontation without going to war with one another. Using recently-declassified American and British documents, Gaddis argues that the postwar international system has contained previously unsuspected elements of stability. This provocative reassessment of contemporary history--particularly as it relates to the current status of Soviet-American relations--will certainly generate discussion, controversy, and important new perspectives on both past and present aspects of the age in which we live.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195043359/?tag=2022091-20
(From the capricious reign of Catherine the Great and Alex...)
From the capricious reign of Catherine the Great and Alexander I to the provocative leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the author concentrates on the interplay between interests and ideologies in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, in an even-handed, non-ideological narrative.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0075572583/?tag=2022091-20
(When Strategies of Containment was first published, the S...)
When Strategies of Containment was first published, the Soviet Union was still a superpower, Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, and the Berlin Wall was still standing. This updated edition of Gaddis' classic carries the history of containment through the end of the Cold War. Beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt's postwar plans, Gaddis provides a thorough critical analysis of George F. Kennan's original strategy of containment, NSC-68, The Eisenhower-Dulles "New Look," the Kennedy-Johnson "flexible response" strategy, the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of détente, and now a comprehensive assessment of how Reagan-- and Gorbachev-- completed the process of containment, thereby bringing the Cold War to an end. He concludes, provocatively, that Reagan more effectively than any other Cold War president drew upon the strengths of both approaches while avoiding their weaknesses. A must-read for anyone interested in Cold War history, grand strategy, and the origins of the post-Cold War world.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195030974/?tag=2022091-20
( September 11, 2001, distinguished Cold War historian J...)
September 11, 2001, distinguished Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis argues, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered American assumptions about national security and reshaped American grand strategy. We've been there before, and have responded each time by dramatically expanding our security responsibilities. The pattern began in 1814, when the British attacked Washington, burning the White House and the Capitol. This early violation of homeland security gave rise to a strategy of unilateralism and preemption, best articulated by John Quincy Adams, aimed at maintaining strength beyond challenge throughout the North American continent. It remained in place for over a century. Only when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 did the inadequacies of this strategy become evident: as a consequence, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt devised a new grand strategy of cooperation with allies on an intercontinental scale to defeat authoritarianism. That strategy defined the American approach throughout World War II and the Cold War. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, Gaddis writes, made it clear that this strategy was now insufficient to ensure American security. The Bush administration has, therefore, devised a new grand strategy whose foundations lie in the nineteenth-century tradition of unilateralism, preemption, and hegemony, projected this time on a global scale. How successful it will be in the face of twenty-first-century challenges is the question that confronts us. This provocative book, informed by the experiences of the past but focused on the present and the future, is one of the first attempts by a major scholar of grand strategy and international relations to provide an answer.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674018362/?tag=2022091-20
Gaddis, John Lewis was born on April 2, 1941 in Cotulla, Texas, United States.
Bachelor, University Texas, 1963. Master of Arts, University Texas, 1965. Doctor of Philosophy, University Texas, 1968.
Assistant professor, Indiana U. S.E., Jeffersonville, 1968-1969;
assistant professor of history, Ohio U., Athens, 1969-1971;
associate professor, Ohio U., Athens, 1971-1976;
professor, Ohio U., Athens, 1976-1983;
distinguished professor of history, Ohio U., Athens, 1983-1997;
director Contemporary History Institute, Ohio U., Athens, 1987-1993;
Robert Lovett professor of history, Yale University, New Haven, since 1997. Visiting professor Naval War College, 1975-1977. Bicentennial professor American history, U. Helsinki, 1980-1981.
Visiting professor politics Princeton University, 1987. Harmsworth professor American History University of Oxford, 1992-1993.
(From the capricious reign of Catherine the Great and Alex...)
( This book moves beyond the focus on economic considerat...)
(What is history and why should we study it? Is there such...)
(In this fascinating new interpretation of Cold War histor...)
( September 11, 2001, distinguished Cold War historian J...)
(When Strategies of Containment was first published, the S...)
(The “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) no...)
(The Cold War ended with an exhilarating wave of events: t...)
(The Cold War ended with an exhilarating wave of events: t...)
(We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History We Now Know: Ret...)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
Member American History Association, Organization American Historians, Society for Historians of America Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations.
Married Toni Dorfman.