ABSTRACT
John Lewis Gaddis’s We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History has become the standard text of “new Cold War history.” In the same way that any Cold War scholar still needs to be familiar with orthodox and revisionist “Cold War histories,” Gaddis’s work will always be important for understanding the approach to Cold War history that he helped to develop. Even if the debate about the Cold War has become more nuanced, international, and diversified than was possible when Gaddis wrote We Now Know, nothing can change the fact that the book broke new ground when it first appeared. Gaddis’s accessible writing style, his talented working of source material from across the ideological divide, and his ability to piece together complicated and diverse events during the early Cold War produced a persuasive synthesis. Since the publication of We Now Know, Gaddis has maintained his reputation as one of the world’s most prominent Cold War historians.
