I read this primarily for the chapter on communism; as a person who grew up largely in the post-communist world it has never made sense to me why people freaked out so much about the "communist threat." Who cares if a country wants to have a communist economy/society? Let them do their thing, let us do ours. By reading about communism, and also the chapter on capitalism, I was hoping to get a greater sense of why each views the other side as evil.

The communism chapter focuses way too much on the history of Russia and China, and does not give enough information about the actual tenets of communism. After reading it I felt like there was so much implied but not actually presented regarding the beliefs of communist societies. I ended up going to Wikipedia for answers. ( )

I was not born until the 80s, so I read this book slightly after-the-fact, but it was still informative and helped me understand what drove the Cold War. ( )