Cold War

Arnold (The Moro War: How America Battled a Muslim Insurgency in the Philippine Jungle, 1902–1913) and Wiener (managing editor, Journal of Military History; The Encyclopedia of North American Colonial Conflicts to 1775: A Political, Social, and Military History) make a very complex and interwoven set of events clear even to readers who are not military historians. Their concise but thorough work addresses broad topics such as the causes and consequences of the Cold War and offers entries on narrower subjects such as Arab nationalism, gulags, Ostpolitik (the German foreign policy initiative), and the United Nations. Related figures, from President Kennedy to Nikita Kruschev and from Joseph McCarthy to Yuri Andropov, are also profiled. An extensive bibliography at the close of the volume as well as suggestions for further reading at the end of each topic make this a great resource for starting research on the era.