| Review of: | The Cold War Era by Fraser J. Harbutt |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Michael Cox |
| Reviewed in: | Political Studies Review |
| Date accepted online: | 04/03/2004 |
| Published in print: | Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages 196-301 |
North America
General studies on the Cold War abound, but this is one of the better ones. The writing is crisp, the coverage from 1945 to 1989 reasonably comprehensive, and some sense of intellectual balance is maintained between the various schools of thought that have fought many a bloody battle over the right to tell the truth about what, for many of us at the time, was the most important relationship in our lives.
Yet I still came away feeling a good opportunity had been missed by the author. The first problem is that Harbutt does not fully engage with the mass of new material that has been disgorged from the archives since the Cold War came to an end. This lends the volume a certain lightweight quality. The book also lacks a truly critical edge. US support for repressive regimes in the third world, the economic costs of the Cold War, the ethical backsliding over a range of political issues - the dark side of the moon, in other words - rarely get a mention. Finally, although the author does not ignore what other historians have written about the conflict, one gets no sense of the real historiographic drama that has always informed the study of the Cold War, and nowhere more schismatically than in America itself, where these issues continue to matter a great deal. Ironically, if Harbutt had tried to write a less fair-minded book acceptable to most undergraduate tastes, he might - in the end - have produced a more interesting volume. As it is, he has written a most worthy one.