Odd Arne Westad Libri

The definitive history of the Cold War and its ongoing impact around the world The Cold War began on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its deepest reverberations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where every community had to choose sides. Those choices continue to define economies and regimes across the world. Stunning in breadth and revelatory in perspective, The Cold War, by prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad, expands our understanding of the conflict both geographically and chronologically, and offers a new understanding of how today's world was created. "An epic account." --Wall Street Journal "An account of the Cold War that is truly global in its scope... a wise and observant history." --New Republic "An ambitious study, perspicacious and panoramic in scope." --Financial Times, Best Books of 2017

Examines China's role in the world in recent centuries to demonstrate how its past is shaping its future, explaining how Western influences have reinforced traditional Chinese mores while establishing potential partnerships

Prize-winning study of the global conflict waged during the Cold War and its legacy today.

Over the past 250 years of momentous change and dramatic upheaval, China has proved itself to be a Restless Empire. Tracing China's course from the eighteenth-century Qing Dynasty to today's People's Republic, Restless Empire shows how the country's worldview has evolved. It explains how Chinese attitudes have been determined by both receptiveness and resistance to outside influence and presents the preoccupations that have set its foreign-relations agenda. Within two decades China is likely to depose the United States as the world's largest economy. By then the country expects to have eradicated poverty among its population of more than one and a half billion, and established itself as the world's technological powerhouse. Meanwhile, some - especially its neighbours - are afraid that China will strengthen its military might in order to bend others to its will. A new form of Chinese nationalism is rising. Many Chinese are angry about perceived past injustices and fear a loss of identity to commercial forces and foreign influences. So, will China's attraction to world society dwindle, or will China continue to engage? Will it attempt to recreate a Sino-centric international order in Eastern Asia, or pursue a more harmonious diplomatic route? And can it overcome its lack of democracy and transparency, or are these characteristics hard-wired into the Chinese system? Whatever the case, we ignore China's international history at our peril. Restless Empire is a magisterial and indispensible history of the most important state in world affairs today. WINNER OF THE 2013 ASIA SOCIETY BERNARD SCHWARTZ BOOK AWARD

Historian Odd Arne Westad provides a concise, insightful overview of 600 years of relations between China and the Koreas. The story traces the transition from Korean cultural and political dependence to the tensions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, providing essential background to a complex contemporary geopolitical dynamic.

The Chinese Civil War was one of the key conflicts of the twentieth century. The Communist victory determined Chinese history for several generations, and defined international relations in East Asia during the Cold War and after. Despite its importance and scope―its battles were the largest military engagements since World War II―until now remarkably little has been known about the war, and even less about its effects on the societies that suffered through it. This major new history of the Chinese Civil War attempts to answer two central Why was the war fought? What were the immediate and the lasting results of the Communists’ victory? Though the book highlights military matters, it also shows how campaigns were mounted alongside profound changes in politics, society, and culture―changes that ultimately contributed as much to the character of today’s China as did the major battles. By analyzing the war as an international conflict, the author explains why so much of the present legitimacy of the Beijing government derives from its successes during the late 1940s, and reveals how the antagonism between China and the United States was born.

The first thorough account of a formative and little understood chapter in Chinese history

In dieser Weltgeschichte des »Kalten Kriegs« analysiert Odd Arne Westad präzise und elegant einen der bedeutendsten Konflikte der Neuzeit. Er beleuchtet die Epoche des »Kalten Kriegs« aus einer globalhistorischen Perspektive und stellt scharfsinnig Bezüge zur Gegenwart her. Der Konflikt prägte die internationale Politik und das Leben der Menschen in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts weltweit, von Hollywood bis Hanoi. Westad präsentiert eine umfassende Geschichte dieses Weltkonflikts und deutet ihn erstmals global. Er zeigt, dass der »Kalte Krieg« weit mehr war als eine begrenzte Konfrontation zwischen den Supermächten und dass er mit dem Kollaps der Sowjetunion nicht endete. Eindrücklich argumentiert er, dass der Konflikt aus den globalen Transformationen des 19. Jahrhunderts hervorging und im Kontext des wirtschaftlichen, technischen, sozialen und politischen Wandels zu verstehen ist. Westad analysiert anschaulich die verschiedenen Phasen der Konfrontation zwischen Kapitalismus und Sozialismus. Dieses Standardwerk ist unerlässlich für alle, die die tiefgreifenden Auswirkungen des »Kalten Kriegs« auf das Leben der Menschen und seine Rolle in der Entstehung der heutigen Welt verstehen wollen.