The Cold War on Five Continents

Reviews / Votes

"Cold War on Five Continents is the culmination of a lifetime of research, analysis and writing that began in the early 1970s when the author wrote, The Politics of Heroin, which the CIA tried and failed to kill. In an age like ours when publishers, editors and reporters bow down before the authorities and authority, Alfred McCoy proves he's once again an American journalist who has mapped the road that the cold warriors have paved with the blood and the bones of humanity and who shows us where we need to go now to survive." -CounterPunch



"Alfred W. McCoy continues his indispensable role as a guide through the shadow side of U.S. empire. His most recent book, Cold War on Five Continents: A Global History of Empire and Espionage, should force us to rethink the postwar period, a sweeping, magisterial, and humane vision of how superpower rivalry was fundamentally a covert op and a psych war, and, in a way, a prelude to our current state of confusion. A tour de force. "

-Greg Grandin, author, America, America: A New History of the New World



"A masterful account of conflict of every sort in almost every imaginable place. Alfred McCoy's history of the Cold War is a must-read." -John Dower



"Sweeping, vivid, and provocative, Alfred McCoy has proven once again that few are his match when it comes to taking a probing, wide-angled lens to the troubles of our time. Cold War on Five Continents manages to span the globe and half a dozen decades, peopling that history with lively figures and showing the larger patterns their roles fit into. An impressive achievement." -Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost







"While politicians pose for photos and speechify, actions by "the man on the spot" determine the fate of nations and empires. Alfred McCoy's compelling narrative describes the handiwork of the arrogant and eccentric oddballs who played pivotal roles during key moments of the Cold War and after. A brilliant, instructive, and deeply disturbing book." -Andrew Bacevich, founder of the Quincy Institute and author of America's War for the Greater Middle East.







"McCoy's monumental achievement, carefully grounded in archives and primary accounts, lays bare the global desolation that attended the U.S.-Soviet proxy wars during the Cold War, with millions killed and tens of millions driven into longlasting poverty. Gimlet-eyed and searingly honest, it lays bare the true cost of letting ideology drive policy." -Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan



"Cold War on Five Continents is a revelatory and gripping saga of global conflict. Distinguished historian Alfred McCoy melds the big picture of Superpower rivalry with narratives of "men on the spot"-covert operatives who carried the struggle to the corners of the earth. McCoy deftly explicates how human agency as well as geopolitics defined the Cold War. The book should be the standard text in university courses to inform new generations about an era that cost 20 million lives. It should also be read in the halls of power to remind political leaders of the dangers of embracing a new Cold War." -Derek Shearer, former US ambassador to Finland, Chevalier professor of Diplomacy, Occidental College







Praise for To Govern the Globe:



"An ambitious effort to discern patterns in the rise and fall of world empires.... McCoy's account is compelling...with many provocative observations on world history and its present twists." -Kirkus



"To Govern the Globe is a brilliant distillation of 700 years of geopolitics, exposing how we arrived where we are, amidst the worsening climate crisis and collapsing world orders. Al McCoy's eloquently written book is a call to action for us all, as time still remains to prevent an unprecedented cascade of catastrophes."

-Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!



"McCoy is one of the most eminent scholars in the world on the abuse of power and authority, on surveillance and repression, on the historical evolution of state-sanctioned torture in the US and elsewhere, and, more recently, on the rapidly declining state of the US empire."

-Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist and author of Blackwater and Dirty Wars



"To Govern the Globe ... offers a kaleidoscopic and timely analysis of the present US decline, contextualizing it among a succession of empires and world orders across the past millennium." -Counterpunch



"In an age where most scholars concentrate on a limited specialty, no one sees a bigger picture more brilliantly than Alfred McCoy. In this powerful, enlightening, and frightening book he gives us a magisterial view of the empires of the past-and of the force in our future which promises to dwarf them all."

-Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost



"To Govern the Globe is history on an epic scale-sweeping, provocative, and unsparing in its judgments. Alfred McCoy's immensely readable narrative spans centuries, charting the rise and fall of successive world orders down to our own present moment shaped by China's emergence as a great power and the blight of climate change."

-Andrew Bacevich, author of After the Apocalypse: America's Role in a World Transformed