The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War

New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993. First edition. First Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good in very good dust jacket. Price clipped. DJ has slight wear and soiling.. viii, [2], 243, [1] p. Notes. Index. H. W. Brands, author of Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918-1961 (OUP/USA 1991) and Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (OUP/USA, Fall 1992), has written a stimulating book on the Cold War and American policy relating to it-especially involving the question of why the Cold War lasted as long as it did. It is Brands's controversial assumption that in many ways it was American attitudes and foreign policy that fostered the extension of the Cold War as long as it lasted. Brands examines America's involvement in the Cold War in four distinct areas-the psychological, strategic, economic, and political-and how these factors interacted with each other in different ways and different periods over the entire era. The book combines these four persepectives into a broad explanation of American action during the Cold War and attempts to answer the question about why America acted as it did. Brands's book is intended to be an extended essay and think-piece, not a comprehensive history of the Cold War. Much of the book focuses on how the Cold War developed a life of its own during its 40-odd years of existence: major groups shaping American foreign policy felt comfortable with its conditions and were reluctant to leave it for uncharted territory. This is a stimulating, well-written study that focuses on the main events and ideas of American foreign policy since the war. It is especially effective in showing how American perceptions and domestic attitudes tended to influence-often negatively-the way American foreign policy dealt with the post-1945 world. From Wikipedia: "Henry Williams Brands (born 1953) is the author of 25 books of American history and biography. He is also the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History and a Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his Ph.D. in history in 1985. He graduated from Stanford University with an undergraduate degree in history in 1975. Brands has also taught at Vanderbilt University and Texas A&M University. Brands has appeared in the documentaries 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America (2006), America: The Story of Us (2010) and The Men Who Built America (2012). He resides in Austin, Texas."