The Cold War shaped the world we live in today - its politics, economics, and military affairs. This book shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the last century created the foundations for most of the key conflicts we see today, including the War on Terror. It focuses on how the Third World policies of the two twentieth-century superpowers - the United States and the Soviet Union - gave rise to resentments and resistance that in the end helped topple one superpower and still seriously challenge the other. Ranging from China to Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua, it provides a truly global perspective on the Cold War. And by exploring both the development of interventionist ideologies and the revolutionary movements that confronted interventions, the book links the past with the present in ways that no other major work on the Cold War era has succeeded in doing.

文安立（Odd Arne Westad）原籍挪威，现任英国伦敦经济学院（LES)国际关系史教授，冷战研究中心主任、《冷战史》(Cold war History)主编以及多卷本《剑桥国际冷战史》(Cambridge Cold War History）主编之一。他于1989年在美国北卡罗莱纳大学获博士学位，曾任挪威诺贝尔研究所研究部主任。他是近年来在国际学术界冷战史研究中涌现出的最负盛名的中青年学者之一。 在国际冷战史学界，文安立原以研究中国与冷战的学术成就而著称。移席伦敦经济学院后，他开始将研究的视角扩展到了整个第三世界与冷战的研究方面，开设了大量的相关课程，积累了丰富的研究资源。