ABSTRACT
Whatever the joys and sorrows of the postwar decade, Adam Ulam kept at work writing and teaching. Much of Adam's work focused on the early period of the Cold War. Today, the 1950s are often viewed as the time when the US was not only a superpower, but could afford to be one, and that the Americans were much more self-confident than they are now after the end of the Cold War. In the Second World War, in addition to the brutal German-Italian occupation, there were several civil wars going on at the same time. No other country, with the exception of Poland and possibly the USSR, lost such a large proportion of its population. Neither Western Europe, recovering from the war's devastation, nor the Americans, enjoying their unexpected prosperity, wanted to risk a Third World War.
