The introduction to this title carefully analyses the crucial events in the years 1944-47, which led to the break down of the Second World War alliance between the 'Big Three' and the onset of the Cold War. The author goes on to show how the Cold War shaped post-war Europe through the division of Germany and created two great military and economic blocs. The narrative discusses the differing definitions of what the Cold War was, paying particular attention to the historical debates on the various aspects of the Cold War. Recent historical research based on newly released material in the former Soviet and Eastern European archives, is used to explain the origins of the Cold War, the Berlin blockade of 1948-9, the Hungarian revolt of 1956, the Second Berlin crisis of 1958-61 and the collapse of Communism in 1989-91. The updated study guides provide a firm basis for answering differentiated source-based and extended writing questions.

2007-06-27 Good but not good enough...

When studying A Level Modern History for OCR, this book was used as a textbook for my entire college class and proved to be quite helpful however it did not go into a lot of detail. For a top-level expanation of most events during the time period and handy diagrams (esp. for revision purposes) this book was very helpful however, for the nitty-gritty facts and in-depth descriptions of different historians' theories it was not as satisfying. As it covers such as large time-period I can understand why there is a lack of detail and although it provided a solid base for most areas of the course I am still glad I did not have to pay for it!!