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American Imperatives

The Cold War and Other Matters
Brief Description
What was the Cold War? In a fundamental challenge to prevailing orthodoxy, Anders Stephanson argues that the conventional view since 1989 is essentially wrong, that it leads to the wrong kind of questions and ultimately serves to obscure the US-centred nature of the entire process. Instead,... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$8300

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A radical reinterpretation of the Cold War by its most iconoclastic historian.

A radical reinterpretation of the Cold War by its most iconoclastic historian.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

What was the Cold War? In a fundamental challenge to prevailing orthodoxy, Anders Stephanson argues that the conventional view since 1989 is essentially wrong, that it leads to the wrong kind of questions and ultimately serves to obscure the US-centred nature of the entire process.

Instead, American Imperatives takes the position that β€˜the cold war’ should be understood as the frame that made not only possible but imperative the global role (in principle if not in reality) of the United States after 1947, and that in its classic form it ended in 1963, after the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Cold War Considerations does not assume that the causes of the great superpower rivalry, and therefore blame for its outbreak, rest solely with the United States: the search for 'origins' has no absolute original point of departure. But the frame was unmistakably and ineradicably American. Without it, there would not have been, properly speaking, a cold war.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781784780562

Publisher: Verso Books

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 15 July 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Verso Books

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 24.0mm

Width: 153.0mm

Height: 234.0mm

Weight: 427g

Pages: 384

About the Author

Anders Stephanson is the Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Professor of History at Columbia University. His published works include Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (1989) and Manifest Destiny (1995). He is a regular contributor to New Left Review and one of the founding editors of Social Text.

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