The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy

Suprising

Even handed but pulls no punches. Hard to put down, theres
one terrifying revelation after another in this book. An
engaging look at how the Cold War worked and the
occasions when it almost became armageddon.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Superbly written story that is solid history filled with real people often misinterpreted.

At first disappointed because the book did not begin where I personally thought it should, by the second chapter I was trapped. Mr. Hoffman has produced a work of history filled with real people who held horrifically great power issuing policies mixed with uplifting possibilities and growing abilities to destroy human life. They were immensely complicated people, filled with full doses of normal human frailties, expressing hopes as simplistic as they were simplistically interpreted by those of us who lived when leadership of great nations was in their hands. I learned much of President Ronald Reagan I did not know before. My respect for him went up, but all my votes against him remain, for me, the correct choices. Readers who were born during and after his presidency will learn much about him as well as the very complex Mikhail Gorbachev. The destructive power they inherited (nuclear, biological, chemical) is still with us with decreasing restraints as other seek to obtain portions of it for their own misguided uses.

Read it! It is a cliche to say Dead Hand reads like a thriller. Anyone who has been through a standard history course in high school or college should be at least minimally familiar as to how it turns out. However, "reads like a thriller" is close. It unfolds like one. The author's access to diaries, letters, and interviews with people who were in the Soviet Union or United States at the times, or were with Gorbachev and Reagan when they were in power allow for learning how people thought, personally felt and mistakes made these possible.

Thriller it is in spite of being essentially a history of the Cold War. It runs from the times of Presidents Carter and Reagan through the rise of the elder George H.W. Bush and Clinton. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan are the central personalities as both worked under the weight of misinterpretations, distrust, ambitions and egos of other powerful people around them. The downfall of the Communist Soviet Union is far more than popular, politically oriented interpretations want us to believe.

Fascinating untold history of the Cold War

I heard about this book on an NPR program talking about a Russian "doomsday machine" that was built during the Cold War... It was interesting to say the least! I ended up buying this book about a week later in order to get additional information for a term paper about the United States' policy of Assured Destruction in a United States Diplomatic History course. It was full of interesting information that I had not known about the Cold War. The book was well written and had me hooked from the introduction. Highly recommended.

Cold war behind the scenes

If you want to know the details and thoughts of the world leadership during the cold war, this is it. It is a very well researched and documented account but still very readable and engaging. Hoffman does a great job of both describing what was going on then and the things we have inherited because of those times. You'll be glad you read it.

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