Matlock, who served in the USSR for most of his career, including as ambassador during the Reagan and Bush administrations, gives this insider's look at the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

The late Dmitri Volkogonov emerged in the last decade of his life as the preeminent Russian historian of this century. His crowning achievement is the account of the seven General Secretaries of the Soviet Empire in Autopsy for an Empire, a book that tells the entire history of the Soviet failure. Having utilized his still-unequaled access to the Soviet military archives, Communist Party documents, and secret Presidential Archive, Volkogonov sheds new light on some of the major events of twentieth-century history and the men who shaped them. We witness Lenin’s paranoia about foreigners in Russia, and his creation of a privileged system for top Party members; Stalin’s repression of the nationalities and his singular conduct of foreign policy; the origins and conduct of the Korean War; Kruschev’s relationship with the odious secret service chief, Beria, and his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Brezhnev’s vanity and stupidity; a new view of Poland and Solidarity; the ossification of Soviet bureaucracy and the cynicism of the Politburo; and Mikhail Gorbachev’s Leninism and his role in history. By profiling the seven successive Soviet leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev, Volkogonov also depicts in painstaking detail the progressive self-destruction of the Leninist system. In his clear-eyed character assessments and political evaluations, lucidly translated and edited by Harold Shukman, Dmitri Volkogonov has once again performed an invaluable service to twentieth-century history.

“[Matlock’s] account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service.”—The New York Times Book Review “Engrossing . . . authoritative . . . a detailed and reliable narrative that future historians will be able to draw on to illuminate one of the most dramatic periods in modern history.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In Reagan and Gorbachev, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and principal adviser to Ronald Reagan on Soviet and European affairs, gives an eyewitness account of how the Cold War ended. Working from his own papers, recent interviews with major figures, and unparalleled access to the best and latest sources, Matlock offers an insider’s perspective on a diplomatic campaign far more sophisticated than previously thought, waged by two leaders of surpassing vision. Matlock details how Reagan privately pursued improved U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations even while engaging in public saber rattling. When Gorbachev assumed leadership, however, Reagan and his advisers found a willing partner in peace. Matlock shows how both leaders took risks that yielded great rewards and offers unprecedented insight into the often cordial working relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev. Both epic and intimate, Reagan and Gorbachev will be the standard reference on the end of the Cold War, a work that is critical to our understanding of the present and the past.

A timely commentary on today's New Cold War between the United States and Russia Karl Marx famously wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” The Cold War waged between the United States and Soviet Union from 1945 until the latter's dissolution in 1991 was a great tragedy, resulting in millions of civilian deaths in proxy wars, and a destructive arms race that diverted money from social spending and nearly led to nuclear annihilation. The New Cold War between the United States and Russia is playing out as farce – a dangerous one at that. The Russians Are Coming, Again is a red flag to restore our historical consciousness about U.S.-Russian relations, and how denying this consciousness is leading to a repetition of past follies. Kuzmarov and Marciano's book is timely and trenchant. The authors argue that the Democrats’ strategy, backed by the corporate media, of demonizing Russia and Putin in order to challenge Trump is not only dangerous, but also, based on the evidence so far, unjustified, misguided, and a major distraction. Grounding their argument in all-but-forgotten U.S.-Russian history, such as the 1918-20 Allied invasion of Soviet Russia, the book delivers a panoramic narrative of the First Cold War, showing it as an all-too-avoidable catastrophe run by the imperatives of class rule and political witch-hunts. The distortion of public memory surrounding the First Cold War has set the groundwork for the New Cold War, which the book explains is a key feature, skewing the nation’s politics yet again. This is an important, necessary book, one that, by including accounts of the wisdom and courage of the First Cold War's victims and dissidents, will inspire a fresh generation of radicals in today's new, dangerously farcical times.

“This persuasive, occasionally provocative book corrects a number of pervasive myths about the Cold War”—from the former U.S. ambassador to the USSR (Publishers Weekly). In Superpower Illusions, Jack F. Matlock refutes the enduring idea that the United States forced the collapse of the Soviet Union by applying military and economic pressure—with wide-ranging implications for U.S. foreign policy. Matlock argues that Gorbachev, not Reagan, undermined Communist Party rule in the Soviet Union and that the Cold War ended in a negotiated settlement that benefited both sides. He posits that the end of the Cold War diminished rather than enhanced American power; with the removal of the Soviet threat, allies were less willing to accept American protection and leadership that seemed increasingly to ignore their interests. Matlock shows how, during the Clinton and particularly the Bush-Cheney administrations, the belief that the United States had defeated the Soviet Union led to a conviction that it did not need allies, international organizations, or diplomacy, but could dominate and change the world by using its military power unilaterally. Superpower Illusions is “a truly remarkable book, both wise and provocative, telling a sad yet instructive story of how the United States failed to exploit a triumph in the Cold War to build a new international order reflecting U.S. interests and principles” (Dimitri Simes, President and CEO, The Center for the National Interest). “A well written, clearly reasoned and thoroughly informed tour of the past half century of American diplomacy—including the roots of its successes and failures—led by a superbly qualified participant. A brilliant book.”—Sidney Drell, Stanford University

On October 19, 1876 a group of leading French citizens, both men and women included, joined together to form an unusual group, The Society of Mutual Autopsy, with the aim of proving that souls do not exist. The idea was that, after death, they would dissect one another and (hopefully) show a direct relationship between brain shapes and sizes and the character, abilities and intelligence of individuals. This strange scientific pact, and indeed what we have come to think of as anthropology, which the group's members helped to develop, had its genesis in aggressive, evangelical atheism. With this group as its focus, The End of the Soul is a study of science and atheism in France in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It shows that anthropology grew in the context of an impassioned struggle between the forces of tradition, especially the Catholic faith, and those of a more freethinking modernism, and moreover that it became for many a secular religion. Among the adherents of this new faith discussed here are the novelist Emile Zola, the great statesman Leon Gambetta, the American birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes embodied the triumph of ratiocination over credulity. Boldly argued, full of colorful characters and often bizarre battles over science and faith, this book represents a major contribution to the history of science and European intellectual history.

This book examines how U.S. citizen groups have been drawn to the issue to develop more comprehensive explanations of American connections to the production and distribution of wealth and poverty in southern Africa and to expand options for transnational citizen activism.

On January 12, 2010, the deadliest earthquake in the history of the Western Hemisphere struck the nation least prepared to handle it. Jonathan M. Katz, the only full-time American news correspondent in Haiti, was inside his house when it buckled along with hundreds of thousands of others. In this visceral, authoritative first-hand account, Katz chronicles the terror of that day, the devastation visited on ordinary Haitians, and how the world reacted to a nation in need. More than half of American adults gave money for Haiti, part of a monumental response totaling $16.3 billion in pledges. But three years later the relief effort has foundered. It's most basic promises—to build safer housing for the homeless, alleviate severe poverty, and strengthen Haiti to face future disasters—remain unfulfilled. The Big Truck That Went By presents a sharp critique of international aid that defies today's conventional wisdom; that the way wealthy countries give aid makes poor countries seem irredeemably hopeless, while trapping millions in cycles of privation and catastrophe. Katz follows the money to uncover startling truths about how good intentions go wrong, and what can be done to make aid "smarter." With coverage of Bill Clinton, who came to help lead the reconstruction; movie-star aid worker Sean Penn; Wyclef Jean; Haiti's leaders and people alike, Katz weaves a complex, darkly funny, and unexpected portrait of one of the world's most fascinating countries. The Big Truck That Went By is not only a definitive account of Haiti's earthquake, but of the world we live in today.

The award-winning historian delivers a “brilliant and deeply informed” analysis of American power from the Spanish-American War to the Trump Administration (New York Journal of Books). In this sweeping and incisive history of US foreign relations, historian Alfred McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power from the 1890s through the Cold War, and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. Since American dominance reached its apex at the close of the Cold War, the nation has met new challenges that it is increasingly unequipped to handle. From the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fracturing military alliances, and the blundering nationalism of Donald Trump, McCoy traces US decline in the face of rising powers such as China. He also offers a critique of America’s attempt to maintain its position through cyberwar, covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.

Examines the meaning of Glasnost and Perestroika in the context of current Soviet history and describes the social and economic changes that have taken place within the Soviet Union and in the newly-independent countries of Eastern Europe.