A World History

The Cold War

'Masterly ... a book of resounding importance for appraising our global future as well as understanding our past' Richard Davenport-Hines, The Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year 
 
'A masterful survey that will set the standard for Cold War scholarship for years to come' Jonathan Steele, London Review of Books 
 
As Germany and then Japan surrendered in 1945 there was a tremendous hope that a new and much better world could be created from the moral and physical ruins of the conflict. Instead, the combination of the huge power of the USA and USSR and the near-total collapse of most of their rivals created a unique, grim new environment: the Cold War. 
 
For over forty years the demands of the Cold War shaped the life of almost all of us. There was no part of the world where East and West did not, ultimately, demand a blind and absolute allegiance, and nowhere into which the West and East did not reach. Countries as remote from each other as Korea, Angola and Cuba were defined by their allegiances. Almost all civil wars became proxy conflicts for the superpowers. Europe was seemingly split in two indefinitely. 
 
Arne Westad's remarkable new book is the first to have the distance from these events and the ambition to create a convincing, powerful narrative of the Cold War. The book is genuinely global in its reach and captures the dramas and agonies of a period always overshadowed by the horror of nuclear war and which, for millions of people, was not 'cold' at all: a time of relentless violence, squandered opportunities and moral failure.

Westad has demonstrated that it is possible to tell the vast story of the Cold War in just 600 pages...a clear and well-written summary of a global conflict

A tremendous and timely history lesson for our age

Westad's panoramic history is an impressive feat

The Cold War evinces a lifetime of research and thought on the subject. Compelling ideas and valuable insights appear frequently...

For generations, the Cold War was context, the inescapable setting of political life. This history sets the Cold War itself in context, within the greater landscape of world history, deeply understood, and masterfully presented. It is a powerful synthesis by one of our great historians

Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Westad has produced a grand narrative of the Cold War. Defining it as a struggle between capitalism and socialism as well as a bipolar international system, Westad brilliantly illustrates its ideological, geopolitical, technological, and economic dimensions. Westad, the world's foremost scholar of the Cold War, once again dazzles readers with the scope and depth of his analysis

Melvyn P. Leffler, Edward Stettinius Professor of American History, Miller Center, University of Virginia

The Cold War is the history of the twentieth century and the foundation for our current world. Arne Westad provides a powerful analysis of why the Cold War occurred, what it meant, and why it still matters. He is especially strong in elucidating the ideas of perfection that drove very imperfect, often brutal, leaders. Westad's book links the Cold War to globalization, recent wars in the Middle East, and American rivalries with Russia and China. This is a book that everyone interested in politics and foreign policy should read. It is a riveting story, told by one of the foremost world historians

Jeremi Suri, author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office

His ambitious book wrests attention away from the classic arenas of Moscow, Berlin and Washington, and looks instead at Indonesia, Chile, Angola, China and Korea, showing how the Cold War affected the globe and how it was, in turn, shaped by events in seemingly distant lands.

Ambitious, perspicacious and panoramic in scope

Odd Arne Westad FBA is a Norwegian historian specializing in the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history. He is the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. He has published a number of books on modern and contemporary international history, among them The Global Cold War, which won the Bancroft Prize, and Restless Empire. He is the co-author of The Penguin History of the World.

As Germany and then Japan surrendered in 1945 there was a tremendous hope that a new and much better world could be created from the moral and physical ruins of the conflict. Instead, the combination of the huge power of the USA and USSR and the near-total collapse of most of their rivals created a unique, grim new environment: the Cold War. 
 
For over forty years the demands of the Cold War shaped the life of almost all of us. Europe was seemingly split in two indefinitely. This is a book of extraordinary scope and daring. It is conventional to see the first half of the 20th century as a nightmare and the second half as a reprieve. Westad shows that for much of the world the second half was by most measures even worse.

China and the World Since 1750

Restless Empire

A prizewinning historian and expert on Chinese foreign relations examines China's relationship with the outside world over the last 250 years, showing how the past will set the course for China's future.

Written by one of the most distinguished scholars on China, this book brings clarity and insight into complex historical issues

Thorough, fast-moving, and consistently clear. Restless Empire gives an excellent introduction to the vagaries of China’s foreign relations over the last 250 years

Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern China

An authoritative and lucid history of China’s foreign relations from the peak of the Qing dynasty in the eighteenth century to the present day. Anyone seeking to understand the role China may play in our future world should start with this book

Stephen R. Platt, author of Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

An essential guide to modern China’s often violent encounter with the rest of the world

Frank Dikotter, author of 'Mao’s Great Famine'

Odd Arne Westad is one of the world's foremost experts on both the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history, having won the Bancroft Prize, the Michael Harrington Award and the Akira Iriye International History Book Award for his seminal book The Global Cold War. A Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, he is also co-director of LSE IDEAS, a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy.

Over the past 250 years of momentous change and dramatic upheaval, China has proved itself to be a Restless Empire. 
 
Tracing China’s course from the eighteenth-century Qing Dynasty to today's People’s Republic, Restless Empire shows how the country’s worldview has evolved. It explains how Chinese attitudes have been determined by both receptiveness and resistance to outside influence and presents the preoccupations that have set its foreign-relations agenda. 
 
Within two decades China is likely to depose the United States as the world’s largest economy. By then the country expects to have eradicated poverty among its population of more than one and a half billion, and established itself as the world’s technological powerhouse. Meanwhile, some – especially its neighbours – are afraid that China will strengthen its military might in order to bend others to its will. 
 
A new form of Chinese nationalism is rising. Many Chinese are angry about perceived past injustices and fear a loss of identity to commercial forces and foreign influences. So, will China’s attraction to world society dwindle, or will China continue to engage? Will it attempt to recreate a Sino-centric international order in Eastern Asia, or pursue a more harmonious diplomatic route? And can it overcome its lack of democracy and transparency, or are these characteristics hard-wired into the Chinese system? Whatever the case, we ignore China’s international history at our peril. 
 
Restless Empire is a magisterial and indispensible history of the most important state in world affairs today. 
 
WINNER OF THE 2013 ASIA SOCIETY BERNARD SCHWARTZ BOOK AWARD

6th edition

The Penguin History of the World

The completely updated edition of J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad's widely acclaimed, landmark bestseller The Penguin History of the World 
 
For generations of readers The Penguin History of the World has been one of the great cultural experiences - the entire story of human endeavour laid out in all its grandeur and folly, drama and pain in a single authoritative book. Now, for the first time, it has been completely overhauled for its 6th edition - not just bringing it up to date, but revising it throughout in the light of new research and discoveries, such as the revolution in our understanding of many civilizations in the Ancient World. The closing sections of the book reflect what now seems to be the inexorable rise of Asia and the increasingly troubled situation in the West. 
 
About the authors: 
 
J.M. Roberts, CBE, published The Penguin History of the World in 1976 to immediate acclaim. His other major books include The Paris Commune from the Right, The Triumph of the West (which was also a successful television series), The Penguin History of Europe and The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century. He died in 2003. 
 
Odd Arne Westad, FBA, is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He has published fifteen books on modern and contemporary international history, among them The Global Cold War, which won the Bancroft Prize, and Decisive Encounters, a standard history of the Chinese civil war. He also served as general co-editor of the Cambridge History of the Cold War. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'A work of outstanding breadth of scholarship and penetrating judgements. There is nothing better of its kind' Lord Jonathan Sumption, Sunday Telegraph 
 
'A stupendous achievement' A. J. P. Taylor 
 
'A brilliant book ... the most outstanding history of the world yet written' J. H. Plumb

A work of outstanding breadth of scholarship and penetrating judgments. There is nothing better of its kind

At once entertaining and scholarly ... a book as challenging as it is consistently absorbing

A brilliant book ... the most outstanding history of the world yet written'

The leading historical mind of his generation

J.M. Roberts, CBE, published The Penguin History of the World in 1976 to immediate acclaim. His other major books include The Triumph of the West and The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century. He died in 2003. 
 
Odd Arne Westad, FBA, is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He has published fifteen books on modern and contemporary international history, among them The Global Cold War, which won the Bancroft Prize, and Restless Empire.

Odd Arne Westad

The world we are entering bears striking similarities to that of the late 19th and early 20th Century, as Britain's hegemony began to give way and a rising Germany sought its place in the sun. Historical analogies are usually difficult to sustain, but Westad brings so much erudition, intelligence, and insight to the table. This is a short book on a big subject that will make you think long after you put it down

A passionate and informed warning about the very real prospects today for Great Power war in light of the origins of World War I. Westad recognizes analogies need not be fate and proposes policies needed to avert catastrophe. Can we and our leaders walk the knife-edge?

Power, Conflict and Warnings from History

If there are lessons from history, now is the time when we need to heed them, so that we do not end up in another Great Power war because of the fatal combinations of jingoism, fear, fatalism, and sheer stupidity that set off the first major war of the 20th century. 
 
The great majority of people alive today have come of age in a world of remarkable stability, presided over by either one or two superpowers. This is not to say the world has been peaceful; but it has to an extent been predictable. As an increasing number of Great Powers now jostle for regional supremacy our world has become more fragile, unpredictable – and combustible. 
 
To understand the threats that face us in this complex new terrain, we must look to the lessons of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century – a time when Great Powers clashed and sought regional dominance, when nationalism and populism were on the rise, and many felt that globalization had failed them: a time, in other words, that carries eerie parallels with our own.

Odd Arne Westad

Praise for The Coming Storm

The world we are entering bears striking similarities to that of the late 19th and early 20th Century, as Britain's hegemony began to give way and a rising Germany sought its place in the sun. Historical analogies a ...

A passionate and informed warning about the very real prospects today for Great Power war in light of the origins of World War I. Westad recognizes analogies need not be fate and proposes policies needed to avert ca ...

Books by Odd Arne Westad

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter