In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning... In this book, the truth behind every spy thriller you've read: why America and the Soviet Union became locked in a deadly stalemate. It tells the story of crisis talks and subterfuge, tyrants and power struggles - and of ordinary people changing the course of history.
In 1950, when Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il-Sung met in Moscow to discuss the future, they had reason to feel optimistic. International Communism seemed everywhere on the offensive: all of Eastern Europe was securely in the Soviet camp; America's monopoly on nuclear weapons was a thing of the past; and Mao's forces had assumed control over the world's most populous country. The story of the previous five decades was one of the worst fears confirmed, and there seemed as of 1950 little sign, at least to the West, that the next fifty years would be any different.
