Provocative, illuminating, and based on a lifetime of research, The Lost Peace is a penetrating look at the misjudgments that caused enormous strife and suffering during a most critical period in history: from the closing months of World War II through the early years of the Cold War. The men who led the world—principally Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle, Mao, Truman, Syngman Rhee, and Kim Il Sung—executed astonishingly unwise actions that propelled the nuclear arms race. The decisions of these great men, for better and often for worse, had profound consequences for the following decades, influencing relations and conflicts in China, Korea, the Middle East, and elsewhere around the globe.

Robert Dallek’s striking reinterpretation of the postwar years, The Lost Peace is a cautionary tale that considers what might have been done differently to avoid the tumult of the mid-twentieth century and the grave difficulties that plagued strong and weak nations alike in a time of fear, mistrust, and uncertainty.