Since the Cold War ended, our understanding of it both as a historical period and as an international system has been transformed by access to new source material from both East and West of the former ideological divide. The purpose of this volume is to take stock of where these new materials are taking us in terms of our understanding of what the Cold War was about and how we should study it. The contributors discuss such issues as: the origins of the Cold War; stages of the conflict, how the Soviet-US rivalry ended; the nuclear arms race; strategic and ideological aspects; the uses of IR theory in Cold War studies; and the emergence of a "new Cold War history"