Overviews

• Ball S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991 (1998), British perspective
• Boyle Peter G. American-Soviet Relations: From the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism. 1993.
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989)
• Clarke, Bob. Four Minute Warning: Britain's Cold War (2005)
• Crockatt Richard. The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941-1991. 1995.
• Friedman, Norman. The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War. (2000)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (2005), recent overview
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States. An Interpretative History 2nd ed. (1990)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982)
• Charles W. Kegley Jr., ed., The Long Postwar Peace. 1991:
• LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1992 7th ed. (1993)
• Lundestad, Geir. East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics since 1945 (1999). Oxford University Press
• Mitchell, George. The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe (2004)
• Ninkovich, Frank. Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (1988)
• Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988)
• Powaski, Ronald E. The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (1998)
• Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians
• Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd ed. (1974)
• Westad, Odd Arne The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (2006)

Historiography

• Fitzpatrick, Sheila. "Russia's Twentieth Century in History and Historiography," The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 46, 2000
• Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1998)
• Gaddis, John Lewis. "The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War," Diplomatic History, Summer 1983: 171-190.
• Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. 1982.
• Kort, Michael. The Columbia Guide to the Cold War (1998)
• Matlock, Jack F. "The End of the Cold War" Harvard International Review, Vol. 23 (2001)
• Walker, J. Samuel. "Historians and Cold War Origins: The New Consensus", in Gerald K. Haines and J. Samuel Walker, eds., American Foreign Relations: A Historiographical Review (1981), 207–236.
• White, Timothy J. "Cold War Historiography: New Evidence Behind Traditional Typographies" International Social Science Review, (2000)
• William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1958) (1988 edition: ISBN 0-393-30493-0)
• Berger, Henry W. ed. A William Appleman Williams Reader (1992)
• Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman Williams. Lloyd C. Gardner (ed.) (1986)
• Westad, Odd Arne (ed.) Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (2000)

Origins: to 1950

• Anderson Terry H. The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944-1947. (1981)
• Bullock Alan. Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951.

1983, on British policy

• Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War: Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (2004)
• Clemens Diane Shaver. Yalta. 1970.
• Cumings, Bruce The Origins of the Korean War (2 vols., 1981–90), friendly to North Korea and hostile to US
• Deighton Anne. "The 'Frozen Front': The Labour Government, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1947," International Affairs 65, 1987: 449-465.
• Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (1972)
• Harbutt, Fraser. "The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War" (Oxford University Press, 1988)
• Holloway, David . Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1959–1956 (1994)
• Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Xue Litai , Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993)
• Isaacson Walter, and Even Thomas. The Wise Men. Six Friends and the World They Made. Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy. 1986.
• Leffler, Melvyn. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992).
• Mastny, Vojtech. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (1979)
• Levering, Ralph, Vladamir Pechatnov, Verena Botzenhart-Viehe, and C. Earl Edmondson. Debating the Origins of the Cold War (2001)
• Yonosuke Nagai and Akira Iriye, eds., The Origins of the Cold

War in Asia. 1977

• Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (1999) (ISBN 0-691-00273-8)

Intelligence

• Aldrich, Richard J. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (2002).
• Ambrose, Stephen E. Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Intelligence Establishment (1981).
• Andrew, Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (1999)
• Mitrokhin. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Mitrokhin Archive (1999). vol 1, on KGB
• Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (1990).
• Blum, William , Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Common Courage Press (2003)
• Bogle, Lori, ed. Cold War Espionage and Spying (2001), essays
• Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (2000).
• Gates, Robert M. From The Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story Of Five Presidents And How They Won The Cold War (1997)
• Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (1999).
• Helms, Richard. A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (2003)
• Koehler, John O. Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police (1999)
• Murphy, David E., Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey. Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (1997).
• Prados, John. Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (1996)
• Rositzke, Harry. The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (1988)
• Trahair, Richard C. S. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations (2004), by an Australian scholar; contains historiographical introduction
• Weinstein, Allen, and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era (1999).

1950s and 1960s

• Beschloss, Michael. Kennedy v. Khrushchev: The Crisis Years, 1960–63 (1991)
• Beschloss Michael. Mayday: Eisenhower, Kennedy and the U-2 Affair 1986.
• Brands, H. W. Cold Warriors. Eisenhower's Generation and American Foreign Policy (1988).
• Brands, H. W. The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power (1997)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, New York: Praeger (1961), ISBN 0-674-82545-4
• Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (2001)
• Divine, Robert A. Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981)
• Divine, Robert A. ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis 2nd ed. (1988)
• Duiker William J. U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina. 1994.
• Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (2000)
• Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (1997)
• Kunz, Diane B. The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American foreign Relations during the 1960s (1994)
• Navratil, Jaromir. The Prague Spring 68´ (1998)
• Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (1998)
• Melanson, Richard A. and David Mayers, eds., Reevaluating Eisenhower. American Foreign Policy in the 1950s (1986)
• Paterson, Thomas G. ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963 (1989).
• Reynolds, David, ed. The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives (1994)
• Stueck, Jr. William W. The Korean War: An International History (1995)
• Vandiver, Frank E. Shadows of Vietnam: Lyndon Johnson's Wars (1997)
• Williams, Kirrian. The Prague Spring and its Aftermath : Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970 (1997)

Detente: 1969–1979

• Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
• Garthoff, Raymond. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan 2nd ed (1994), detailed narrative
• Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger (1992);
• Kissinger, Henry. White House Years (1979) and Years of Upheaval (1982)
• Nixon, Richard. Memoirs (1981)
• Sarrotte, M.E. Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, Detente & Ostpolitik, 1969-73 The University of North Carolina Press, (2001)
• Ulam, Adam B. Dangerous Relations. The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970–1982 (1983)
• Westad, O. A., The Fall of Detente: Soviet-American Relations During the Carter Years, 1997 (Aschehoug AS) ISBN 82-00-37671-0

Second Cold War: 1979–1986

• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. not power and principle Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981'' (1983);
• Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)
• Mower, A. Glenn Jr. Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: The Carter and Reagan Experiences (1987),
• Smith, Gaddis. Morality, Reason and Power:American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986).

End of Cold War: 1986–1991

• Beschloss, Michael, and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Levels:The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (1993)
• Bialer, Seweryn and Michael Mandelbaum, eds. Gorbachev's Russia and American Foreign Policy (1988).
• Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (1992)
• Garthoff, Raymond. The Great Transition:American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (1994), detailed narrative
• Hogan, Michael ed. The End of the Cold War. Its Meaning and Implications (1992) articles from Diplomatic History online at JSTOR
• Kyvig, David ed. Reagan and the World (1990)
• Matlock, Jack F. Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1995)
• Matlock, Jack F. Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (2004)
• Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993)
• Pons, S., Romero, F., Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations, (2005) (London: Frank Cass) ISBN 071465695X (Hardback)
• David Remnick, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, Vintage Books, 1994, ISBN 0-679-75125-4

Economics and Internal Forces

• Heiss, Mary Ann. "The Economic Cold War: America, Britain, and East-West Trade, 1948–63" The Historian, Vol. 65, (2003)
• Hogan, Michael J. The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (1989)
• Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye. Power and Interdependence (3rd Edition) (2000)
• Kunz, Diane B. Butter and Guns: America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy (1997)
• Morgan, Patrick M. and Keith L. Nelson (eds); Re-Viewing the Cold War: Domestic Factors and Foreign Policy in the East-West Confrontation (1997)

Popular culture

• Boyer, Paul S. By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1994)
• Mulvihill, Jason. "James Bond's Cold War Part I" Journal of Instructional Media, Vol. 28, (2001)
• Schwartz, Richard Alan. Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945–1990 (2000)
• Zeman, Scott C. "I Was a Cold War Monster: Horror Films, Eroticism and the Cold War Imagination"
• Shapiro Jerome F. Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film (2001)
• Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War (1996) ISBN 0-8018-5195-5 (paperback)
• Burdick, Eugene, Harvey Wheeler. Fail-Safe (1962)

Primary sources: Documents and memoirs

• Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1992).
• Baruch, Bernard. The Public Years (1960).
• Bohlen, Charles. Witness to History, 1929-1969. 1973
• Eden, Anthony. The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon. Vol. 2: The Reckoning. London: 1965.
• Eisenhower, Dwight D. The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956. (1963); The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1957-1961. (1965).
• Etzold, Thomas and John Lewis Gaddis , eds., Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950 (1978)
• Chang, Laurence and Peter Kornbluh , eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1952 (1985)
• Kennan, George F. Memoirs, 1925-1950. 1957
• Milovan, Djilas. Conversations with Stalin. 1962, Yugoslav perspective
• Khrushchev, Nikita. Memoirs:
• Khrushchev Remembers ed. Strobe Talbott (1991)
• Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament ed. Strobe Talbott (1987)
• Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes ed. Jerrold Schechter (1989)
• Kissinger, Henry
• vol 1 White House Years (1979)
• vol 2 Years of Upheaval (1982)
• vol 3 Years of Renewal (1999), 1974–1976
• Nixon, Richard. Memoirs (1981)
• Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (1993)
• Westad and Hanhimaki (eds.) The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2004)