I choosed “The Best Books to Reconsider What the Cold War Really Was” for Shepherd.com.
“Westad has shown one mode of the perfection of Cold War scholarship; now we must contemplate what to do next.”
This is a superb work that bridges international and social history, underpinned by highly impressive research, to make arguments of real importance for our understanding of the Cold War.” -Rana Mitter
Top page: “This is a wonderful book that will certainly be widely quoted and incorporated into a large set of literatures on the Cold War. […]. No other scholar would have even attempted such a wide ranging monograph backed up with such a range of primary sources. The attention that the book will undoubtedly receive is entirely merited, and its arguments will set the standard for quite some time to come.” —Julia C. Strauss (SOAS, University of London)
Masuda Hajimu’s research focuses on the modern history of Japan and East Asia, the history of U.S. foreign relations, and the social and global history of the Cold War. A former journalist for Mainichi Shinbun and the author of articles in Foreign Policy, Diplomatic History, Journal of Contemporary History, and the Journal of Cold War Studies, he has analyzed the evolving power of the people in the modern world, regardless of any political spectrum, with particular attention to intersections between war and society and politics and culture in the mid-20th century. His first book, Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World, published by Harvard University Press in …