The Cold World They Made

An impressive book about one of the most fascinating and influential couples in recent American history, Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter. The book is full of very interesting material and sheds new light on an extraordinary chapter in the history of American strategic thought. -- Marc Trachtenberg, author of The Cold War and After
Ron Robin is outstanding in reconstructing the mental world and cultural milieu that engaged the Wohlstetters. He also shows that Roberta Wohlstetter was a crucial intellectual partner in the marriage of these two scholarly Cold Warriors. -- Bruce Kuklick, author of Death in the Congo
The Wohlstetters were among the most influential strategic thinkers in Cold War America. In this dual intellectual biography, Ron Robin shows how their grim vision of a dangerous, unpredictable world took shape, and how through their followers their vision continued to shape U.S. global strategy in the post-9/11 era. -- Erez Manela, coeditor of Empires at War, 1911-1923
Provocative...The Cold World They Made is a withering indictment of the Wohlstetters and their influence on defense policy. -- Philip Taubman * New York Times Book Review *
Robin's book is about a rabid form of foreign-policy thinking that speaks with placid assurance about 'reality,' that presents itself as 'pre-emptive' but takes the form of outright aggression, that claims to be 'strategic,' but is often more enamored of tactics than actual strategy. -- Thomas Meaney * Chronicle of Higher Education *
Although critical of the Wohlstetters' policy agenda, Robin reveals that they possessed more intellectual depth than their many detractors recognize and traces the ways in which their legacy has been sustained by disciples such as Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz. -- Lawrence D. Freeman * Foreign Affairs *
Thanks to Ron Robin, we now know that [the Wohlstetters'] actual contribution was not to strategy and certainly not to the avoidance of war, but to the art of propaganda. Rather than freeing mankind from fear, they promoted it while simultaneously feathering their own comfortable nest. -- Andrew Bacevich * First Things *