This is an elegant and concise history of American foreign relations during the Cold War era, based on the most recent American, Chinese, and Soviet literature, written from a post-Cold War perspective. All of the major foreign policy issues, including the origins of the Soviet-American conflict; the extension of the confrontation to Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere on the periphery; wars in Korea and Vietnam; crises involving the Taiwan Straits, Berlin, and Cuba; the rise and fall of détente; imperial overreach; and the critical roles of Reagan and Gorbachev in the 1980s are carefully analysed and clearly explained.