Books for Delbert Borden

On the Cold War

My book, mentioned in class:

The Venona Secrets: The Definitive Exposé of Soviet Espionage in America (Cold War Classics) Paperback – December 8, 2014

The following book is on MY summer reading list.  Former Soviet spy reveals MODERN day issues facing the U.S. and its role in the world.  Very "cloak and dagger" and conspiracy oriented... something I think you told me you were after.

Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism Hardcover – June 25, 2013
by Ronald Rychlak (Author), Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa  (Author)

You might like this book on the CIA.  A little bit of both sides, one of those sides being the CIA's service as a promoter of American imperialism.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA Paperback – May 20, 2008
by Tim Weiner  (Author)

The following book has an interesting point of view of the Cold War involving the game of chess.

White King and Red Queen
By Daniel Johnson (2007)

In 'hot' wars, nations come to blows—they fight, they bomb, they settle their differences. In "cold" wars, by definition, not much happens. For more than 40 years, the Western powers and the Soviet bloc were engaged in a potentially annihilating nuclear stand-off. Daniel Johnson's thesis in "White King and Red Queen" is simple and engaging: that the tension between the two competing sides was alleviated across, of all things, a chessboard. "Chess offered a demilitarized, purely abstract equivalent of war," he argues. "A battlefield that was genuinely global could be represented by sixty-four squares." In the immediate postwar era, the great Soviet grandmasters—Mikhail Botvinnik, Viktor Korchnoi, Boris Spassky—were dominant. Then came America's Bobby Fischer, and the balance of power, in chess and beyond, changed forever.

This website has a list of books with detailed explanations.  It also includes historiography details, such as which histories are "dated" and which have experienced critiques as to their authenticity.

http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2014/11/03/ten-histories-of-the-cold-war-worth-reading/

