Books in Brief

Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War, by Joseph Shattan (Heritage Foundation, 342 pp., $14.95)

WHETHER or not all history is really biography, nothing makes the story of the Cold War more vivid than to recall the handful of individuals whose courage and moral clarity made a difference. Joseph Shattan tells the tale through the careers of six genuine heroes—Europeans and Americans, statesmen and intellectuals. It’s an intelligent (and not entirely predictable) selection: Harry Truman, for his steadfastness in the Berlin airlift and Greek-Turkish aid and his vision in the Marshall Plan and formation of the Atlantic Alliance; Winston Churchill, for his unwavering clarity about Bolshevism and the clarion call he sounded at Fulton; Konrad Adenauer, who aligned free Germany unconditionally with the West and thereby gave the West the strategic high cards in Central Europe; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose eye-opening documentation of the Gulag, smuggled to the West at extraordinary personal risk, utterly transformed public (and intellectual) opinion in both Western Europe and America; Pope John Paul II, whose courage electrified his native Poland and inspired the anti-Communist movements that shook the East; and, last but not least, Ronald Reagan, whose moral and strategic leadership threw the “Evil Empire” decisively on the defensive. Each story is a slice of history. Experts might quibble with points here and there, but the research and analysis are superb, as is the writing. Especially for the younger generations who did not live through it, an invaluable primer on our recent history.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War, by Joseph Shattan (Heritage Foundation, 342 pp., $14.95)

WHETHER or not all history is really biography, nothing makes the story of the Cold War more vivid than to recall the handful of individuals whose courage and moral clarity made a difference. Joseph Shattan tells the tale through the careers of six genuine heroes—Europeans and Americans, statesmen and intellectuals. It’s an intelligent (and not entirely predictable) selection: Harry Truman, for his steadfastness in the Berlin airlift and Greek-Turkish aid and his vision in the Marshall Plan and formation of the Atlantic Alliance; Winston Churchill, for his unwavering clarity about Bolshevism and the clarion call he sounded at Fulton; Konrad Adenauer, who aligned free Germany unconditionally with the West and thereby gave the West the strategic high cards in Central Europe; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose eye-opening documentation of the Gulag, smuggled to the West at extraordinary personal risk, utterly transformed public (and intellectual) opinion in both Western Europe and America; Pope John Paul II, whose courage electrified his native Poland and inspired the anti-Communist movements that shook the East; and, last but not least, Ronald Reagan, whose moral and strategic leadership threw the “Evil Empire” decisively on the defensive. Each story is a slice of history. Experts might quibble with points here and there, but the research and analysis are superb, as is the writing. Especially for the younger generations who did not live through it, an invaluable primer on our recent history.