HIST2453 / 4453: Cold War [Hi]Stories (FR) Guide Ask Us

Reference and Historiographic Sources

(organized chronologically)

To search for books at UNB Libraries, first use the library's online catalogue, UNB WorldCat. UNB WorldCat contains materials held at the Harriet Irving, Science and Forestry, Engineering, and Law libraries, as well as the HW Klohn Learning Commons in Saint John.

Shelf Browsing

To browse the shelves for books on the Cold War, start with the following ranges:

Canadian History

Document Delivery

Books and other materials not available at UNB may be available for loan from another institution through our document delivery service. To search for materials not held by UNB Libraries, search UNB WorldCat, and change the default UNB Libraries to Libraries Worldwide. Once you have identified a title that is not locally held, select the red Request Item button and follow the screens. You can also access the document delivery request form directly.

When searching for journal articles, an indexing and abstracting database is usually the best place to begin. 

Journals related to Cold War history

• Cold War History
• Diplomatic History
• International Journal of Military History and Historiography
• International Security
• Journal of Cold War Studies
• Journal of Intelligence History

Finding Primary Sources

UNB Libraries subscribe to two online archives of primary sources related to the Cold War:

Open Access Resources

• Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room (CIA, formerly CREST)
• FBI Records: The Vault
• Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)
• OSS (Office of Strategic Services) Records in National Archives
• US National Archives
• National Security Agency
• MUCKROCK (public records requests)
• The Black Vault
• Canada Declassified

Primary sources are also available in the Library's general collection (in print and online). To find these, use UNB WorldCat to run a search for your topic along with a subject search for "sources". For example, if you would like to find books that include primary sources on Mikhail Gorbachev, you would search for kw:"Mikhail Gorbachev" AND su:sources in UNB WorldCat. Other subject searches that will help you find primary source material include "correspondence", "narratives", "diaries", and "speeches".

Selected works reproduced and organized chronologically from Curt Cardwell, "The Cold War," Chap. 6 in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), 114, note 1.

Lippmann, Walter. 1943. U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic. Boston: Little, Brown.

Lippmann, Walter. 1947. The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Harper.

Price, Harry Bayard. 1955. The Marshall Plan and Its Meaning. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
[available via document delivery service]

Nitze, Paul H. 1956. U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945-1955. New York: Foreign Policy Association.
[available via document delivery service]

Jones, Joseph M. 1964. The Fifteen Weeks, February 21-June 5, 1947. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World.

Feis, Herbert. 1960. Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Lukacs, John. 1966. A New History of the Cold War. Third Edition. Garden City, N.Y: Anchor Books.

Feis, Herbert. 1966. The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II. Revised Edition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Schlesinger, Arthur. 1967. "Origins of the Cold War." Foreign Affairs 46 (1): 22-52.

Halle, Louis Joseph. 1967. The Cold War as History. London: Chatto & Windus.

Feis, Herbert. 1970. From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950. New York: Norton.

Ulam, Adam B. 1971. The Rivals: America and Russia Since World War II. New York: Viking Press.

Robert H. Ferrell. 1974. "Truman Foreign Policy: A Traditionalist View." In The Truman Era as a Research Field: A Reappraisal, edited by Richard S. Kirkendall, 11-45. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Acheson, Dean. 1987. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York: Norton.

List of works reproduced and organized chronologically from Curt Cardwell, "The Cold War," Chap. 6 in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), 114-115, note 2.

Fleming, D. Frank. 1961. The Cold War and Its Origins, 1917-1960. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company.

Steel, Ronald. 1967. Pax Americana. New York: Viking Press.

LaFeber, Walter. 1968. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1966. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley.

Kolko, Gabriel. 1968. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945. New York: Random House.

___. 1969. The Roots of American Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Power and Purpose. Boston: Beacon Press.

Gardner, Lloyd C., Arthur M. Schlesinger, and Hans J. Morgenthau. 1970. The Origins of the Cold War. Waltham, MA: Ginn-Blaisdell.

Clemens, Diane Shaver. 1970. Yalta. New York: Oxford University Press.

Paterson, Thomas G, ed. 1971. Cold War Critics: Alternatives to American Foreign Policy in the Truman Years. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
[Available via document delivery service]

Gardner, Lloyd C. 1972. Architects of Illusion : Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941-1949. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
[Available via document delivery service]

Kolko, Joyce, and Gabriel Kolko. 1972. The Limits of Power : The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954. New York: Harper & Row.

Paterson, Thomas G. 1973. Soviet-American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bernstein, Barton J., ed. 1974. Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration. New York: New Viewpoints.

Alperovitz, Gar. 1985. Atomic Diplomacy : Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin.

Freeland, Richard M. 1985. The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of Mccarthyism : Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-1948. New York: New York University Press.

Paterson, Thomas G. 1990. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan. New York: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.2307/1908746.

Williams, W. Appleman. 1991. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. New York: W. W. Norton.

Gardner, Lloyd C. 1993. Spheres of Influence: The Great Powers Partition Europe, from Munich to Yalta. Chicago: I.R. Dee.

Kofsky, Frank. 1993. Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation. New York: St. Martin's Press.

McCormick, Thomas J. 1995. America's Half-Century : United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Selected works reproduced and organized chronologically, from Curt Cardwell, "The Cold War," Chap. 6 in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), 115-116, notes 4, 5, 6.

Gaddis, John L., and Mazal Holocaust Collection. 1972. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947. New York: Columbia University Press.

Yergin, Daniel. 1977. Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Lundestad, Geir. 1980. America, Scandinavia, and the Cold War, 1945-1959. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gaddis, John L. 1983. "The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis and the Origins of the Cold War." Diplomatic History 7, no. 3: 171-190, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.1983.tb00389.x.

Gardner, Lloyd C. 1983. "Responses to John Lewis Gaddis, The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War.” Diplomatic History 7, no. 3: 191-204, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.1983.tb00390.x.

Leffler, Melvyn P. 1984. "The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-48." American Historical Review 89 (2): 346–381, https://doi.org/10.2307/1862556.

Leffler, Melvyn P. 1984. "The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945–48: Reply." American Historical Review 89, no. 2: 391–400, https://doi.org/10.2307/1862558.

Lundestad, Geir. 1986. “Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945-1952.” Journal of Peace Research 23, no. 3: 263–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/423824.

Hogan, Michael J. 1998. A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/.

Leffler, Melvyn P. 1999. "The Cold War: What Do 'We Now Know'?" American Historical Review 104 (2): 501–524, https://doi.org/10.2307/2650378.

Westad, Odd A. ed. 2000. Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory. London: F. Cass.

Gaddis, John Lewis. 2005. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin Press.

Wright, Patrick. 2007. Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Aunesluoma, Juhana, and Kettunen P., eds. 2008. The Cold War and the Politics of History. Helsinki: Edita Pub.
[Available via document delivery service]

Bozo, Frederic, N. Piers Ludlow, Leopoldo Nuti, and Marie-Pierre Rey, eds. 2008. Europe and the End of the Cold War: A Reappraisal. New York: Routledge.

Brands, Hal. 2010. Latin America's Cold War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Kwon, Heonik. 2010. The Other Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press. doi: 10.7312/kwon15304.

Bozo Frédéric, Marie-Pierre Rey, Bernd Rother, and N. Piers Ludlow, eds. 2012. Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945-1990. New York: Berghahn Books. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Hogan, Michael J., ed. 2014. America in the World: The Historiography of US Foreign Relations Since 1941. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Beck, John, and Ryan Bishop, eds. 2022. Cold War Legacies: Legacy, Theory, Aesthetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474409490.

Accurate, properly formatted footnotes, reading lists, and bibliographies are hallmarks of good academic research. Through citing, you acknowledge the source of any ideas you mention in your writing, document your research, and provide the information your readers need to track down your sources.

The standard citation style for History is Chicago:

• Chicago Manual of Style Endnote/Footnote Format
  (You will be asked for a student login.)
• Chicago Documentation Examples
• The Chicago manual of style
  HIL-REFDSK Z253 .U69 2010

Cite, Annotate, and Collect

Zotero is a free, citation management software that collects, manages, and cites research sources. It's easy to use and works with your web browser. Zotero can export your citations directly to Microsoft Word or Pages with only a click of the mouse and now enables you to annotate PDFs.

Pocket is a great app for bookmarking and managing links. It allows you to save web pages for later viewing and makes them available without an internet connection. Since Pocket automatically syncs files across your devices you don't have to worry about switching between devices. Free and available for iOS and Android.

Evernote is a cloud-based repository for anything you don't want to forget. Sortable "notebooks" can save webpages, files, PDFs, text notes, and images. A tagging and organizing structure makes it easy to find what you're looking for. Evernote is freely available for iOS and Android.