List of primary and secondary sources on the Cold War

Cold War European Military Alliances

This is an English language bibliography of scholarly books and articles on the Cold War. Because of the extent of the Cold War (in terms of time and scope), the conflict is well documented.

The Cold War (Russian: холо́дная война́, kholodnaya voĭna) was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World — primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies — and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its NATO allies.

Overviews

• Ball, S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991 (1998), British perspective; short summary; online edition
• Boyle Peter G. American-Soviet Relations: From the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism. 1993.
• The Cambridge History of the Cold War (3 vol. 2010) online
• Clarke, Bob. Four Minute Warning: Britain's Cold War (2005)
• Crockatt Richard. The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941-1991. (1995). popular history
• Davis, Simon, and Joseph Smith. The A to Z of the Cold War (Scarecrow, 2005), encyclopedia focused on military aspects
• Friedman, Norman. The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War. (2000)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (2005), basic summary;
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History 2nd ed. (1990)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987) online edition
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982)
• Garthoff, Raymond (1994). Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 0-8157-3041-1. 
• Hoffman, David E. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (2010)
• House, Jonathan. A Military History of the Cold War, 1944-1962 (2012) excerpt and text search
• Immerman, Richard H. and Petra Goedde, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (2013) excerpt
• LaFeber, Walter (2002). America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2002. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-284903-7. 
• Leffler, Melvyn (1992). A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2218-8. 
• Leffler, Melvyn P. and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cambridge History of the Cold War (3 vol, 2010) 2000pp; new essays by leading scholars
• Lundestad, Geir (2005). East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics since 1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN 1-4129-0748-9. 
• Lüthi, Lorenz M (2008). The Sino-Soviet split: Cold War in the communist world. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-13590-8. 
• McMahon, Robert (2003). The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280178-3. 
• Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet insecurity: the Stalin years (1996) online edition
• Mitchell, George. The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe (2004)
• Njolstad, Olav (2004). The Last Decade of the Cold War. Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-8371-X. 
• Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988)
• Roberts, Geoffrey (2006). Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11204-1. 
• Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians
• Stone, Norman. The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War (2010); by leading military historian
• Taubman, William (2004). Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-32484-2. ; Pulitzer Prize
• Tucker, Spencer, ed. Encyclopedia of the Cold War: A Political, Social, and Military History (5 vol. 2008), world coverage
• Walker, Martin. The Cold War: A History (1995), British perspective
• Wettig, Gerhard (2008). Stalin and the Cold War in Europe. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7425-5542-9. 
• Westad, Odd Arne The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (2006)
• Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2008)

National perspectives

Soviet

• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989)
• Catchpole, Brian. A Map History of Russia (1974), pp 79-117
• Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
• Frankel, Benjamin. The Cold War 1945-1991. Vol. 2, Leaders and other important figures in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and the Third World (1992), 379pp of biographies.
• Gilbert, Martin. Routledge Atlas of Russian History (4th ed. 2007) excerpt and text search
• Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Litai Xue, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993)
• Gorlizki, Yoram, and Oleg Khlevniuk. Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953 (2004) online edition
• Harrison, Hope Millard (2003). Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-1961. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09678-3. 
• Haslam, Jonathan. Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (Yale University Press; 2011) 512 pages
• Mastny, Vojtech. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (1979)
• Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (1998) online complete edition; online edition from ACLS E-Books
• Nation, R. Craig. Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917-1991 (1992)
• Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (2007) 468pp
• Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians
• Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (2004), Pulitzer Prize;
• Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd ed. (1974)
• Wettig, Gerhard. Stalin and the Cold War in Europe: The Emergence & Development of East-West Conflict, 1939-1953 (2008) 285p
• Zubok, Vladislav M. Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (1996)
• Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007)

American

• Bacevich, Andrew J., ed. The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II (2007)
• Cummings, Richard H. Radio Free Europe's Crusade for Freedom: Rallying Americans Behind Cold War Broadcasting 1950-1960 (2010)
• Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War civil rights: Race and the image of American democracy (Princeton UP, 2011).
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982) online edition;
• Hogan, Michael J. America in the World: The Historiography of US Foreign Relations since 1941 (1996), scholarly articles reprinted from the journal Diplomatic History
• Leffler, Melvyn P. For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (2007)
• Lewis, Adrian R. The American Culture of War: The History of U.S. Military Force from World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom (2006)
• Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988), liberal interpretation
• Roark, James L. "American Black Leaders: The Response to Colonialism and the Cold War, 1943-1953." African Historical Studies 4.2 (1971): 253-270.

British

• Anderson Terry H. The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944-1947. (1981)
• Bullock, Alan. Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951. 1983, on British policy
• Clarke, Bob. Four Minute Warning: Britain's Cold War (2005)
• Deighton Anne. "The 'Frozen Front': The Labour Government, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1947," International Affairs 65, 1987: 449-465. in JSTOR
• Young, John W. Winston Churchill's Last Campaign: Britain and the Cold War, 1951-5 Clarendon Press, 1996 online edition

China and Taiwan

• Cheek, Timothy, ed. A Critical Introduction to Mao (2010), 392pp; essays by scholars
• Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Litai Xue, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993)
• Jian, Chen. Mao's China and the Cold War (2001)
• Jian, Chen. China's Road to the Korean War: Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (2004)
• Luthi, Lorenz M. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (2008)
• Roberts, Priscilla. Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the Cold War (2006)
• Ross, Robert S. Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969–1989, (1995) online edition
• Spence, Jonathan D. Mao Zedong: A Penguin Life (1999), 208pp; by a leading scholar
• Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (2011)
• Vogel, Ezra F. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011), full-scale biography
• Zhai, Qiang. China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (2000)

Europe

• Allen, Debra J. The Oder-Neisse Line: The United States, Poland, and Germany in the Cold War (2003) 309 pp.
• Borhi, László. Hungary in the Cold War, 1945-1956 (2004) 352 pages
• Clemens, Clay. Reluctant Realists: The Christian Democrats and West German Ostpolitik, Duke University Press, 1989 online edition
• Crace, Sylvia E. and John O. Crane. Czechoslovakia: Anvil of the Cold War, 1991
• Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, (2005)
• Naimark, Norman, and Leonid Gibianskii. Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949 (1998)
• Ninkovich, Frank. Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (1988)
• Sarrotte, M.E. Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, Détente & Ostpolitik, 1969-73 The University of North Carolina Press, (2001) online edition
• Turner, Henry Ashby. Germany from Partition to Reunification (1992)

Asia

• Goscha, Christopher E. & Ostermann, Christian F. (eds.), Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945-1962. Washington, DC & Stanford California: Woodrow Wilson Center Press & Stanford University Press, 2009.
• Vu, Tuong & Wasana Wongsurawat (eds.), Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia: Ideology, Identity, and Culture. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.
• Zheng Yangwen, Liu, Hong, & Szonyi, Michael (eds.). The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds. Leiden: Brill University Press, 2010.

Origins: to 1950

• Anderson Terry H. The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944-1947. (1981)
• Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 (2012) excerpt and text search
• Bullock Alan. Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951. (1983), on British policy
• Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War: Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (2004)
• Clemens Diane Shaver. Yalta. 1970.
• Cumings, Bruce The Origins of the Korean War (2 vols., 1981–90), friendly to North Korea and hostile to US
• Deighton Anne. "The 'Frozen Front': The Labour Government, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1947," International Affairs 65, 1987: 449-465.
• Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (1972)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life (2011)
• Harbutt, Fraser. "The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War" (Oxford University Press, 1988)
• Holloway, David . Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1959–1956 (1994)
• Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993)
• House, Jonathan M. ‘’A Military History of the Cold War, 1944-1962’’ (University of Oklahoma Press; 2012) 546 pages; scholarly history with special attention to military commanders and political leaders
• Isaacson Walter, and Even Thomas. The Wise Men. Six Friends and the World They Made. Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy. 1986.
• Leffler, Melvyn. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992).
• Mastny, Vojtech. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (1979)
• Levering, Ralph, Vladamir Pechatnov, Verena Botzenhart-Viehe, and C. Earl Edmondson. Debating the Origins of the Cold War (2001), Russian and American perspectives
• Yonosuke Nagai and Akira Iriye, eds., The Origins of the Cold War in Asia. 1977
• Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (1999) (ISBN 0-691-00273-8)

1950s and 1960s

• Beschloss, Michael. Kennedy v. Khrushchev: The Crisis Years, 1960–63 (1991)
• Beschloss Michael. Mayday: Eisenhower, Kennedy and the U-2 Affair 1986.
• Brands, H. W. Cold Warriors. Eisenhower's Generation and American Foreign Policy (1988).
• Brands, H. W. The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power (1997)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, New York: Praeger (1961), ISBN 0-674-82545-4
• Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (2001)
• Chernus, Ira, Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity (2008)
• Cummings, Richard H. "Radio Free Europe's 'Crusade for Freedom': Rallying Americans Behind Cold War Broadcasting, 1950-1960," (2010)
• Divine, Robert A. Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981)
• Divine, Robert A. ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis 2nd ed. (1988)
• Duiker William J. U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina. 1994.
• Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (2000)
• Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (1997)
• Granville, Johanna. The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956. (2004)
• House, Jonathan M. A Military History of the Cold War, 1944-1962 (University of Oklahoma Press; 2012) 546 pages; scholarly history with special attention to military commanders and political leaders
• Kunz, Diane B. The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American foreign Relations during the 1960s (1994)
• Navratil, Jaromir. The Prague Spring 68´ (1998)
• Lüthi, Lorenz M. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (2008)
• Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (1998)
• Melanson, Richard A. and David Mayers, eds., Reevaluating Eisenhower. American Foreign Policy in the 1950s (1986)
• Paterson, Thomas G. ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963 (1989).
• Radchenko, Sergey, Two Suns In the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967 (2008)
• Reynolds, David, ed. The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives (1994)
• Stueck, Jr. William W. The Korean War: An International History (1995)
• Vandiver, Frank E. Shadows of Vietnam: Lyndon Johnson's Wars (1997)
• Williams, Kirrian. The Prague Spring and its Aftermath : Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970 (1997)

Detente: 1969–1979

• Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
• Garthoff, Raymond. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan 2nd ed (1994), detailed narrative
• Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger (1992);
• Kissinger, Henry. White House Years (1979) and Years of Upheaval (1982)
• Nixon, Richard. Memoirs (1981)
• Sarrotte, M.E. Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, Détente & Ostpolitik, 1969-73 The University of North Carolina Press, (2001)
• Ulam, Adam B. Dangerous Relations. The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970–1982 (1983)
• Westad, O. A., The Fall of Détente: Soviet-American Relations During the Carter Years, 1997 (Aschehoug AS) ISBN 82-00-37671-0

Second Cold War: 1979–1986

• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (1983);
• Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
• Halliday, Fred. The Making of the Second Cold War (1983, Verso, London).
• Mower, A. Glenn Jr. Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: The Carter and Reagan Experiences (1987),
• Smith, Gaddis. Morality, Reason and Power:American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986).

End of Cold War: 1986–1991

• Beschloss, Michael, and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Levels:The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (1993)
• Bialer, Seweryn and Michael Mandelbaum, eds. Gorbachev's Russia and American Foreign Policy (1988).
• Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (1992)
• Garthoff, Raymond. The Great Transition:American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (1994), detailed narrative
• Hogan, Michael ed. The End of the Cold War. Its Meaning and Implications (1992) articles from Diplomatic History online at JSTOR
• Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000 (2001) ISBN 978-0192802453
• Kyvig, David ed. Reagan and the World (1990)
• Mann, James. Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (2009) 390p; excerpt and text search
• Matlock, Jack F. Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1995)
• Matlock, Jack F. Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (2004)
• Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993)
• Pons, S., Romero, F., Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations, (2005) (London: Frank Cass) ISBN 0-7146-5695-X (Hardback)
• David Remnick, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, Vintage Books, 1994, ISBN 0-679-75125-4
• Wilson, James Graham (2014). The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev's Adaptability, Reagan's Engagement, and the End of the Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801452295. 

Economics and Internal Forces

• Heiss, Mary Ann. "The Economic Cold War: America, Britain, and East-West Trade, 1948–63" The Historian, Vol. 65, (2003)
• Hogan, Michael J. The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (1989)
• Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye. Power and Interdependence (3rd Edition) (2000)
• Kunz, Diane B. Butter and Guns: America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy (1997)
• Morgan, Patrick M. and Keith L. Nelson (eds); Re-Viewing the Cold War: Domestic Factors and Foreign Policy in the East-West Confrontation (1997)

Intelligence

• Aldrich, Richard J. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (2002).
• Ambrose, Stephen E. Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Intelligence Establishment (1981).
• Andrew, Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (1999)
  • Mitrokhin. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Mitrokhin Archive (1999). vol 1, on KGB
• Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (1990).
• Blum, William, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Common Courage Press (2003)
• Bogle, Lori, ed. Cold War Espionage and Spying (2001), essays
• Cummings, Richard H., Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 (2010)
• Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (2000).
• Gates, Robert M. From The Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story Of Five Presidents And How They Won The Cold War (1997)
• Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (1999).
• Helms, Richard. A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (2003)
• Koehler, John O. Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police (1999)
• Murphy, David E., Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey. Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (1997).
• Prados, John. Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (1996)
• Rositzke, Harry. The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (1988)
• Trahair, Richard C. S. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations (2004), by an Australian scholar; contains historiographical introduction
• Weinstein, Allen, and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era (1999).

Naval Aspects

• Christopher A. Ford, David A. Rosenberg, Randy Carole Balano, The Admirals' Advantage: U.S. Navy Operational Intelligence in World War II And the Cold War. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005).
• The Cold War at sea: an international appraisal, Journal of Strategic Studies, (April 2005). Special issue guest editors: Lyle J. Goldstein, John B. Hattendorf and Yuri M. Zhukov.
• John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986. Newport Paper, no. 19. (Newport: Naval War College Press, 2005).
• Peter Huchthausen and Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix.Hide and seek: the untold story of Cold War espionage at sea. (Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons, 2008).
• Norman Polmar, Chronology of the Cold War at Sea, 1945-1991. (Annapolis; Naval Institute Press, 1998).
• Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. (New York: Public Affairs, 1998).
• David F. Winkler, Cold War at Sea: High-Seas Confrontation Between the United States and the Soviet Union. (Annapolis; Naval Institute Press, 2000).

Propaganda, rhetoric, region, popular culture

• Andrews, James T. "Inculcating Materialist Minds: Scientific Propaganda and Anti-Religion in the USSR During the Cold War." in Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe. (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016) pp. 105-125.
• Barnhisel, Greg, and Catherine Turner, eds. Pressing the Fight: Print, Propaganda, and the Cold War (2010) 312 pages.
• Belmonte, Laura A. Selling the American Way: US Propaganda and the Cold War (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
• Boyer, Paul S. By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1994)
• Carpenter, Charles A. Dramatists and the Bomb: American and British Playwrights Confront the Nuclear Age, 1945-1964. Greenwood, 1999. 183 pp.
• Charney, Michael W. "U Nu, China and the "Burmese" Cold War: Propaganda in Burma in the 1950s" in Zheng Yangwen, Hong Liu, & Michael Szonyi (eds.), The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds (Leiden: Brill University Press): pp. 41–58.
• Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War civil rights: Race and the image of American democracy (2nd ed. Princeton UP, 2011), widely cited study..
• Gery, John. Nuclear Annihilation and Contemporary American Poetry: Ways of Nothingness. U. Press of Florida, 1996. 235 pp.
• Fernlund, Kevin Jon, ed. The Cold War American West, 1945-1989. University of New Mexico Press, 1998. 222 pp.
• Henriksen, Margot A. Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age. U. of California Press, 1997. 451 pp.
• Kirby, Dianne, ed. Religion and the Cold War (2003) 272 pp.
• Kuznick, Peter J., and James Gilbert, eds. Rethinking Cold War Culture (Smithsonian Institution, 2013).
• Major, Patrick. "Future Perfect?: Communist Science Fiction in the Cold War." Cold War History 2003 4(1): 71-96. ISSN 1468-2745 Fulltext: in Ebsco
• Marsh, Rosalind J. Soviet Fiction Since Stalin: science, politics and literature (1986)
• McConachie, Bruce. American Theatre and the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment, 1947-1962. University of Iowa Press, 2003; 364pp
• Medhurst, Martin J. Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology Michigan State University Press, 1997
• Miller, D. Quentin. John Updike and the Cold War: Drawing the Iron Curtain (2001)
• Mitter, Rana; Patrick Major. Across the Blocs. Exploring Comparative Cold War Cultural and Social History (2004) 150pp;
• Mulvihill, Jason. "James Bond's Cold War Part I" Journal of Instructional Media, Vol. 28, (2001)
• Parker, Stephen R., Rhys W. Williams, Colin Riordan. German Writers and the Cold War, 1945-61 (1992) 250pp
• Resch, John P. and Richard Jensen, eds. 'Americans at War: Society, Culture and the Homefront (2005), vol 4: 1946 to Present
• Saunders, Frances Stonor. The cultural cold war: The CIA and the world of arts and letters (New Press, 2013).
• Schwartz, Richard Alan. Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945–1990 (2000)
• Seed, David. American Science Fiction and the Cold War (2002)
• Shapiro Jerome F. Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film (2001)
• Shaw, Tony. Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (University Press of Kansas; 2010) 301 pages; compares five American and five Soviet films
• Stone, Albert E. Literary Aftershocks: American Writers, Readers, and the Bomb. (1994).
• Turner, Catherine. Pressing the fight: print, propaganda, and the Cold War (U of Massachusetts Press, 2012).
• Ventresca, Robert A. "The Virgin and the Bear: Religion, Society and the Cold War in Italy." Journal of Social History. Volume: 37#2 (2003) pp 439+.
• Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War (1996) ISBN 0-8018-5195-5
• Winkler, Allan M. Life under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom. (1993). 290 pp.
• Wittner, Lawrence S. The Struggle against the Bomb. 3 vol (1993–2003). antiwar movements in US and Europe
• Zeman, Scott C. "I Was a Cold War Monster: Horror Films, Eroticism and the Cold War Imagination," Journal of Popular Culture, August 2004

Novels

• Burdick, Eugene, and Harvey Wheeler. Fail-Safe (1962)

Religion

• Gunn, T. Jeremy Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion (2008) ISBN 0-275-98549-0 Praeger
• Kirby, Dianne (Editor) Religion and the Cold War (2002) ISBN 0-333-99398-5 Palgrave Macmillan
• Inboden III, William Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (2008) ISBN 0-521-51347-2 Cambridge University Press

Historiography

• Autio-Sarasmo, Sari. "A New Historiography of the Cold War?" European History Quarterly (2011) 41#4 pp 657–664, focus on Europe
• Ferrell, Robert H. Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists. (2006). 142 pp.
• Fitzpatrick, Sheila. "Russia's Twentieth Century in History and Historiography," The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 46, 2000
• Gaddis, John Lewis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, (1998) also online edition * Gaddis, John Lewis. "The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War," Diplomatic History, Summer 1983: 171-190.
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. (1982). online edition
• Garthoff, Raymond L. "Foreign Intelligence and the Historiography of the Cold War." Journal of Cold War Studies 2004 6(2): 21-56. ISSN 1520-3972 Fulltext: Project Muse
• Hogan, Michael J., ed. America in the World: The Historiography of US Foreign Relations since 1941 (1996), scholarly articles reprinted from the journal Diplomatic History
• Hwang, Dongyoun. "The politics of China studies in South Korea: A critical examination of South Korean historiography of modern China since 1945" Journal of Modern Chinese History (2012) 6#2 pp 256–276
• Kaplan, Lawrence S. American Historians and the Atlantic Alliance, (1991) online edition
• Kort, Michael. The Columbia Guide to the Cold War (1998)
• Maier, Charles S. "Revisionism and the Interpretation of Cold War Origins," Perspectives in American History (1970), Vol. 4, pp 313–347
• Matlock, Jack F. "The End of the Cold War" Harvard International Review, Vol. 23 (2001)
• Olesen, Thorsten B. Ed. The Cold War and the Nordic Countries: Historiography at a Crossroads. Odense: U Southern Denmark Press, 2004. Pp. 194. online review
• Suri, Jeremi. "Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?" Journal of Cold War Studies (2002) 4#4 pp. 60–92 in Project Muse
• Trachtenberg, Marc. "The Marshall Plan as Tragedy." Journal of Cold War Studies 2005 7#1 pp 135–140. ISSN 1520-3972 Fulltext: in Project Muse
• Walker, J. Samuel. "Historians and Cold War Origins: The New Consensus", in Gerald K. Haines and J. Samuel Walker, eds., American Foreign Relations: A Historiographical Review (1981), 207–236.
• Westad, Arne Odd. "The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms," Diplomatic History, 2000, Vol. 24 in EBSCO
• Westad, Arne Odd, ed. Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (2000) essays by scholars
• White, Timothy J. "Cold War Historiography: New Evidence Behind Traditional Typographies" International Social Science Review, (2000)
• William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1958) (1988 edition: ISBN 0-393-30493-0)
  • Berger, Henry W. ed. A William Appleman Williams Reader (1992)
  • Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman Williams. Lloyd C. Gardner (ed.) (1986)
• Xia, Yafeng. "The Study of Cold War International History in China: A Review of the Last Twenty Years," Journal of Cold War Studies10#1 Winter 2008, pp. 81–115 in Project Muse

Primary sources: Documents and memoirs

Document collections

• Chang, Laurence and Peter Kornbluh, eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (1985)
• Etzold, Thomas and John Lewis Gaddis, eds., Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950 (1978)
• Hanhimaki, Jussi M. and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2004)
• John B. Hattendorf, ed., U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s: Selected Documents. Newport Paper, no. .(Newport: Naval War College Press, 2007).
  • John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, eds., U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980s: Selected Documents. Newport Paper, no. 33.(Newport: Naval War College Press, 2008).
  • John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986. Newport Paper, no. 19 (Newport: Naval War College Press, 2005). Appendix I, pp. 101–183, is the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate on "Soviet Naval Strategy and Programs through 1990": NIE-11—15-82D of 19 October 1982.
• "Cold War Archival Material". United States Army Center of Military History. Retrieved June 10, 2010. 
• "Digital Archive". Cold War International History Project. Retrieved April 29, 2013. 

Memoirs

• Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1992).
• Baruch, Bernard. The Public Years (1960).
• Bohlen, Charles. Witness to History, 1929-1969. 1973
• Brezhnev, Leonid Brezhnev's trilogy (1978–79)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (1983);
• Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. 1962, Yugoslav Communist perspective
• Eden, Anthony. The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon. Vol. 2: The Reckoning. London: 1965.
• Eisenhower, Dwight D. The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956. (1963); The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1957-1961. (1965).
• Kennan, George F. Memoirs, 1925-1950. 1957
• Kosygin, Alexei, Memoirs (?)
• Khrushchev, Nikita. Memoirs:
  • Khrushchev Remembers ed. Strobe Talbott (1991)
  • Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament ed. Strobe Talbott (1987)
    • Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes ed. Jerrold Schechter (1989)
• Gromyko, Andrei Memoirs (1989).
• Kissinger, Henry
  • vol 1 White House Years (1979)
  • vol 2 Years of Upheaval (1982)
  • vol 3 Years of Renewal (1999), 1974–1976
• Nixon, Richard. Memoirs (1981)
• Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993)

See also

• Bibliography of Canadian military history
• Bibliography of United States military history