Part 4 Annotated further reading guide

The Détente Era, 1972–80

The essential text for these years is:

  • Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American–Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan (Brookings, Washington, 2nd edn., 1994).

Memoirs from some key US players are particularly rich in this period. On the Nixon–Ford administrations see:

  • Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Little, Brown, Boston, 1979).
  • Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Little, Brown, Boston, 1982).
  • Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1989).
  • Richard Nixon, RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1978).

And on the Carter years:

  • Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977 –81 (Farrar-Strauss-Giroux, New York, 1983).
  • Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Collins, London, 1982).
  • Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in American Foreign Policy (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983).

On the Soviet side the essential memoirs are:

  • Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents, 1962–86 (Times Books, New York, 1995).
  • Andrei Gromyko, Memories (Hutchinson, London, 1989).

While archives on the period are only just opening, there are also a number of good, detailed studies on the Nixon-Kissinger years:

  • Jonathan Aitken, Nixon: a life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1995).
  • William Bundy, A Tangled Web: the Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (I. B. Tauris, New York, 1998).
  • Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: a Biography (Faber & Faber, London, 1992).
  • Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace: foreign policy in the Nixon Years (Viking Press, New York, 1978).
  • Richard Thornton, The Nixon-Kissinger Years (Paragon, New York, 1989).
  • Jussi Hanhimaki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American foreign policy (Oxford University Press, 2004).
  • Jeremy Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Harvard University Press, 2007).

But on the Carter administration see especially:

  • David Brinkley, ‘The Rising Stock of Jimmy Carter’, Diplomatic History, 4 (1966).
  • Richard Thornton, The Carter Years: Towards a New Global Order (Pentagon, New York, 1991).
  • John Dumbrell, The Carter Presidency (Manchester University Press, 1993).
  • Burton and Scott Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter (Second edition, University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, 2006).
  • Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason and Power: American diplomacy in the Carter years (Hill and Wang, New York, 1986).
  • Robert Strong, Working in the World: Jimmy Carter and the making of American foreign policy (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 2000).

Valuable studies of Soviet foreign policy include:

  • Robin Edmonds, Soviet Foreign Policy: the Brezhnev Years (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983).
  • Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Détente (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1984).
  • Adam B. Ulam, Dangerous Relations: the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970–82 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983).
  • Richard Anderson, Public Politics in an Authoritarian State: making foreign policy during the Brezhnev years (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1993).
  • Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, eds.,  Brezhnev Reconsidered (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002).

More specifically on the theme of détente are:

  • Mike Bowker and Phil Williams, Superpower Détente: a Reappraisal (Sage, London, 1988).
  • Robert Litwak, Détente and the Nixon Doctrine (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984).
  • Richard Pipes, US–Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente (Westview Press, Boulder, 1981).
  • Richard Stevenson, The Rise and Fall of Détente (Macmillan, London, 1985).
  • John van Oudenaren, Détente in Europe (Duke University Press, Durham, 1991).
  • Odd Arne Westad, The Fall of Détente (Oslo University Press, Oslo, 1997).
  • Jeremy Suri, Power and Protest: global revolution and the rise of détente (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2003).

But for a focus on European détente:

  • Kenneth Dyson (ed.), European Détente: Case Studies in the Politics of East–West Relations (Pinter, London, 1986).
  • Vojtech Mastny, Helsinki, Human Rights and European Security (Duke University Press, Durham, 1986).
  • Daniel Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: international norms, human rights and the demise of communism (Princeton University Press, 2001).

And the Sino–American rapprochement is analysed in:

  • Robert Ross, Negotiating Co-operation: the US and China, 1969–89 (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1995).
  • Evelyn Goh, Constructing the US Rapprochement with China (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
  • William Kirby et al, eds., The Normalization of US-China Relations (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2005).

On the continuing problems of Indochina:

  • Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Kansas University Press, Lawrence, 1998).
  • Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1996).
  • Odd Arne Westad and Sophie Quinn-Judge, The Third Indochina War: conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-79 (Cass, London, 2006).

On the 1973 war and its aftermath in the Middle East:

  • Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity (Collins, London 1978).
  • Kenneth Stein, Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin and the Quest for Arab–Israeli peace (Routledge, New York, 1999).
  • William Quandt, Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics (Brookings, Washington, 1986).

On the Civil War in the Lebanon see:

  • Farid el-Khazen, The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2000).
  • Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation (Deutsch, London, 1990).

While on the Iranian revolution and its impact see:

  • James Bill, The Eagle and the Lion (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1988).
  • Richard Cottam, Iran and the United States: a Cold War Case Study (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1988).
  • Shireen Hunter, Iran and the World (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990).
  • Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: the American Experience and Iran (Oxford University Press, New York, 1990).
  • Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003).
  • Kenneth Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: the struggle between Iran and America (Random House, New York, 2004).
  • Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2004).

And on the Cold War’s impact on Africa in the 1970s:

  • Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2002).
  • Norrie McQueen, The Decolonisation of Portuguese Africa (Longman, London, 1997).
  • Robert Patman, The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990).
  • Donna Jackson, Jimmy Carter and the Horn of Africa (McFarland, Jefferson, 2007).

On the advances in strategic arms control in these years see:

  • John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: the Story of SALT (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1973).
  • Strobe Talbott, Endgame: the Inside Story of SALT II (Harper & Row, New York, 1979).
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