through war, which made him a ruthless and hardened man. While on the other extreme is Khrushchev, who lived through the revolution, which made him a gambler and outstanding bluffer. These two men compromise most of the focus of the book because both brought the world close to war again with their personalities running the Kremlin, Krushchev just brought it closer to nuclear war. The authors use the idea that Westerners do not have a clear understanding of the culture of communist Russia. This leads them to over explain and over emphasis, at times the way that Russia was. In one of the chapters on Khrushchev they explain his family life and early childhood to be the reason for the actions of misleading the important people around him, most notably Stalin (175), at least once every page if not every paragraph. This is a little over done but they do get the point across at all levels of historical experience.The main sources that they use to support their idea about the men are secondary sources. However, when the speeches or telegrams between the countries various leaders are at issue they do use primary sources.Overall, this is a well written, complete work on how the Soviet Union dealt with the powerful people of their country. While at the same time using brief biographies of each man to emphasis the cultural aspects of the USSR that so often are left out of the Cold War books....
