The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis (Penguin, £8.99).

When the Second World War ended in 1945, many ordinary people no doubt looked forward with hope to a new era of peace.

Instead the world was immediately thrown into a potentially far more dangerous conflict between the world's leading superpowers - the United States and the Soviet Union.

With the victorious allies jostling for influence and power in post-war Europe, old alliances soon broke down and a frosty relationship - which often teetered on the brink of all-out nuclear war - broke out, which was to last for 45 years.

In this succinct and clearly-written book, John Lewis Gaddis admirably describes the factors which lead to the Cold War and analyses the thinking behind the actions of the countries involved.

He points out that, for the first time in the history of mankind, the dominant species on the planet created a new weapon - the atomic bomb - but chose not to use it. Instead it was the almost certain knowledge that starting a nuclear war would lead to mutual self-destruction which lead to a period of relative peace.

Of course there were numerous local conflicts along the way - Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan - and the author leads the reader through the causes of these wars and why the superpowers, frightened of losing influence and allowing each other to grow stronger, played their part in them.

He also argues that smaller countries, such as Egypt, were sometimes able to play the superpowers off against each other for their own ends.

And he shows how, as people power and free thinking prospered and overturned ideological thinking in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, a remarkable cast of characters - including Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul ll and Lech Walesa - helped shape a new world in which many old dictatorships were swept aside.

Looking back, it is remarkable how swiftly the Iron Curtain fell - once Solidarity won power in Poland, people in other Soviet bloc countries also pushed for self-determination and many Communist Party leaders lost power.

The day the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 marked a huge turning point. The world would never be the same again.

The Cold War is already beginning to feel like history - particularly as a new threat, international terrorism, now occupies the minds of the world's strongest nations.

But Lewis Gaddis has, with this book, given a brilliant account of a fascinating period in European history.