Young & Kent: International Relations since 1945
Part II: Cold War: Crises and Change 1953-1963
On Eisenhower:
S. Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. 2, The President, 1952–1969 (Allen & Unwin, London, 1984).
For a favourable and revisionist view of his Cold War strategy:
Robert R. Bowie and Richard Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998).
R. Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War (Oxford University Press, New York, 1981).
S. Dockrill, Eisenhower’s New Look National Security Policy (Macmillan, London, 1996).
For critical views of his Cold War strategy and a more precise understanding of Cold War fighting:
Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The US Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945–1956 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999).
Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc 1947–1956 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2000).
John W. Young, Winston Churchill’s Last Campaign: Britain and the Cold War, 1951–5 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996).
For Khrushchev:
V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1996).
W. J. Thompson, Khrushchev: A Political Life (Macmillan, Basingstoke, l995).
On Kennedy which has important material on the crises and on Khrushchev:
M. Beschloss, Kennedy v. Khrushchev: the Crisis Years, 1960–1963 (Faber & Faber, London, 1991).
Nigel Ashton, Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2002).
There are some interesting articles on the Kennedy years in:
T. G. Paterson (ed.), Kennedy’s Quest for Victory (Oxford University Press, New York, 1989).
D. B. Kunz (ed.), The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade American Foreign Relations during the 1960s (Columbia University Press, New York, 1994).
Mark White (ed.), (Kennedy: the New Frontier Revisited (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1998).
The crucial Cold War element in this period is to ensure that books and articles are read that base their analyses on distinguishing between Cold War and Hot War and to realize that the campaign against the Soviet Union and communism on the one hand, and communism’s support for and involvement in revolutionary movements on the other, were different from the attempts to avoid the catastrophe of Hot War and settling Us–Soviet disputes. For material relevant to this:
‘Eisenhower’s Disarmament Dilemma: From Chance for Peace to Open Skies Proposal’ in Diplomacy and Statecraft, 2 (2001).
Kenneth A. Osgood, ‘Form before Substance: Eisenhower’s Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy’ Diplomatic History, 3 (2000).
On European issues between the two protagonists:
M. Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the Europe Settlement 1945–1963 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999).
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997).
Wilfred Loth, Overcoming the Cold War: A History of Détente (Palgrave, New York, 2001).
On Trans-Atlantic relations:
Pascaline Winant, Eisenhower, Kennedy and the United States of Europe (Macmillan, Basingstoke. 1993).
On Eastern European problems:
Christian F. Ostermann, ‘The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953 and the Limits of Rollback’, Working Paper 11, CWIHP (1994).
Mark Kramer, ‘The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings’, Journal of Contemporary History, 2 (1998).
Alexsandr Stykalin, ‘The Hungarian Crisis of 1956: the Soviet Role in the Light of New Archival Documents’, Cold War History, 1 (2001).
Mark Kramer, ‘The Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and Upheavals in East-Central Europe: Internal-External Influences in Soviet Policy Making’, Journal of Cold War Studies 1/1, 1/2, and 1/3 (1999).
C. Bekes, M. Byrne, J. Rainer, (eds) The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents, (Budapest, Central University Press, 2002).
J. Granville, The First Domino: International Decision-Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956, (Texas, A and M Press, 2004).
V. Mastny and M.Byrne, Malcolm (eds) A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955-1991, Budapest, Central European University Press (2005)
On armament:
Andreas Wenger, Living with Peril Eisenhower: Kennedy and Nuclear Weapons (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, 1997).
F. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983).
On the Suez Crisis for detail and for the regional origin:
Keith Kyle, Suez (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1991).
W. S. Lucas, Divided We Stand: Britain the US and the Suez Crisis (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1991).
British Documents on the End of Empire, Series B, vol. 4, J. Kent (ed.), Egypt and the Defence of the Middle East, 1945–1956 (Stationery Office, London, 1998).
British Documents on the End of Empire, Series A, vol. 4, R. Hyam and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), The Conservative Governments 1957–1964 (Stationery Office, London, 1998).
On Latin America for the contrasts and similarities between the policies of Eisenhower and Kennedy:
Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: the Foreign Policy of Anti-Communism (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1988).
Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World. John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1999).
S. G. Rabe, ‘Controlling Revolutions: Latin America the Alliance for Progress and Cold War Anti-Communism’, in T. G. Paterson (ed.), Kennedy’s Quest for Victory (Oxford University Press, New York, 1989).
A. M. Schlesinger Jr., ‘The Alliance for Progress: a Retrospective’, in R. G. Hellman and H. J. Rosebaum (ed.), Latin America: the Search for a New International Role (Latin American International Affairs Series / Centre for Inter-American Relations, New York, 1975).
For details of the CIA coup in Guatemala:
R. H. Immermann, The CIA in Guatemala: the Foreign Policy of Intervention (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1982).
E. Kinzer, and S. Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: the Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Doubleday, Garden City, 1982).
On the Berlin crises for material not based on archive sources:
H. M. Catudal, Kennedy and the Berlin Crisis (Berlin Verlag, Berlin, 1980).
J. M. Schick, The Berlin Crisis 1958–1962 (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1971).
And for the earlier origins which conditioned US policy:
David G. Coleman, ‘Eisenhower and the Berlin Problem 1953–1954’ Journal of Cold War Studies, 1 (2000).
On China and the offshore islands:
Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin (eds.), Re-examining the Cold War. US–China Diplomacy 1954–1973 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2001).
Odd Arne Westad (ed.), Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance 1945–1963 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Stanford, 1998).
G. H. Chang, Friends and Enemies: the US, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948–72 (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990).
On the Cuban Missile Crisis:
See for a record of the Ex-Com meetings:
Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikov, The Kennedy Tapes inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1997)
And for an approach mixing theory and history:
Graham Allison and Philip D. Zelikov, Essence of Decision (Longman, New York, 2nd edn., 1999).
For a focus on Cuba and the Soviet perspective:
Alexsandr Furschenko and Timothy Natfali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy 1958–1964 (Norton, New York, 1992).
J. G. Blight et al., ‘Essence of Revision: Moscow, Havana and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, International Security (1989/90).
Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Reconsidering Khrushchev’s Gambit—Defending the Soviet Union and Cuba’, Diplomatic History, 3 (1990).
P. Brenner, ‘Thirteen Months: Cuba’s Perspective on the Missile Crisis’ in James A. Nathan (ed.), The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited (St Martin’s Press, New York, 1992).
For details and debate:
James G. Hershberg, ‘Before the “Missiles of October”, Did Kennedy Plan a Military Strike against Cuba’, Diplomatic History, 2 (1990).
B. J. Bernstein, ‘The Cuban Missile Crisis: Trading the Jupiters in Turkey’, Political Science Quarterly (1980).
James G. Blight, Joseph S. Nye, and David A. Welch, ‘The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited’ Foreign Affairs, 1 (1987).
R. N. Lebow, ‘The Cuban Missile Crisis: Learning the Lessons Correctly’, Political Science Quarterly (1983).
R. N. Lebow, ‘Domestic Politics and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, Diplomatic History, 2 (1990).
For details of the early years of the Vietnam conflict:
A. J. Short, The Origins of the Vietnam War (Longman, London, 1989).
David L. Anderson, Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–1961 (Columbia University Press, New York, 1991).
Smith, R. B., An International History of the Vietnam War, 1: Revolution Versus Containment (1983); 2: The Struggle for South-East Asia, 1961–5 (Macmillan, London, 1985).
John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception. Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power (Warner, New York, 1992).
Cheng Guan Ang, Vietnamese Communists’ Relations with China and the Second Indochina Conflict, 1957–1962 (McFarland, Jefferson, 1997).
On the US attitudes to the End of the European Empires and the African crises which were important under Kennedy:
M. Kalb, The Congo Cables: the Cold War in Africa—from Eisenhower to Kennedy (Macmillan, New York, 1982).
R. D. Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa (Oxford University Press, New York, 1983).
C. Fraser, ‘Understanding American Policy towards Decolonization’, Diplomacy and Statecraft (1992).


