ABSTRACT
John Lewis Gaddis recognized the complexity of the historical forces that shaped the Cold War in We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. But this complexity meant that historians reacted to We Now Know in interesting and unpredictable ways. Explorations of themes as varied as ideas, values, language, culture, race, gender, geopolitics, economics, and domestic political culture, to name but a few, have all appeared since Gaddis published We Now Know. Gaddis’s methodology in We Now Know challenged the post-revisionist school of Cold War historians—a surprise to many, as Gaddis had previously been at the forefront of the movement. Geir Lundestad argued that Gaddis was “being far too critical of his own earlier views and that his new views represent a dangerous return to the orthodox school of interpretation.” Historians tend to focus more on the part played by ideas, ideologies, and cultures than grand strategy—an analysis that Gaddis supported.
