Good narrative of events, but light on insight

Written with verve and pace, this book nonetheless fails to do much to explain the shifts it identifies, between three phases of Cold War violence.

For instance, the third phase, "the great sectarian revolt", is explained only by reference to Washington's previous campaigns against communism and secular nationalism, and by the Sino-Soviet split. For a global development of such scale and reach, that's an extremely light touch explanation. (Black Wave by Kim Ghattas is a good read on this.) During this section, as well, the connections to the Cold War writ large are tenuous, and hence it loses a bit of its interest - at least if you're already somewhat familiar with the history.

It's odd, given the geographical and temporal scope identified, that there's no mention of the Yemeni civil war (the one Nasser intervened in), or the British intervention in Oman.

Some reviewers have said they think it's anti-American and glosses over rights abuses by the USSR and China. That is not true. Overall it's very straight, and probably a really good introduction to the Cold War period for someone not familiar with many of the key episodes.

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Interesting enough, but not sure what it is

Essentially this book is a brief history of a selection of conflicts during the cold War. The intent is to support an argument that the cold war wasn't actually all that peaceful, and that the tensions it created really negatively impacted the potential for moderate governments to develop in the third world, particularly in the band of countries roughly bordering the Soviet and US / Chinese spheres of influence.

It's interesting enough hearing a summary of the various conflicts, but I couldn't help thinking that it rather skipped over a lot of conflicts and struggles (eg in South America) which it would have been interesting to hear about, and would probably also have supported the conclusions of the book, even though it probably does make sense to focus on the biggest conflicts of each decade the most.

A lot of the summary of what happened in the conflicts which most time is spent on (Korea and Vietnam) will be familiar to anyone with an interest in that time period, and doesn't necessarily relate directly to the apparent intent of the book.

Basically I feel like this should either have been a longer book, examining more of the conflicts that occurred and linking them back to the overall themes of the Cold War being quite violent and creating extremist politics, or it should have been a much shorter book giving much briefer historical background to big conflicts like Korea and Vietnam, but maybe with a more direct focus on linking to the conclusions.

Still, overall it was an interesting listen. You'll probably get most out of the book if you're not really familiar with the major conflicts of the Cold War, although even if you do have more background knowledge it still offers an interesting perspective with a bit more of a focus on the politics than some of the more military-history oriented books.

The Middle East conflicts was one area covered by this book that I wasn't really that familiar with, so did find that particularly interesting, I suppose as I got to take in the actual events that took place as described in the book as well as hearing about the more political side of things at a higher level and how it related back to the book's main argument.

Narration was clear and engaging.

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To much missing out

What happened to Bush 1st battle then what about the 2nd battle, what about the tank war etc with Egypt

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