From Cold War to Hot Peace
An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia
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Narrated by:
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L. J. Ganser
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By:
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Michael McFaul
About this listen
In 2008, when Michael McFaul was asked to leave his perch at Stanford and join an unlikely presidential campaign, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today's most contentious and consequential international relationships. As President Barack Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of US-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president. From the first days of McFaul's ambassadorship, the Kremlin actively sought to discredit and undermine him, hassling him with tactics that included dispatching protesters to his front gates, slandering him on state media, and tightly surveilling him, his staff, and his family.
From Cold War to Hot Peace is an essential account of the most consequential global confrontation of our time.
©2018 Michael McFaul (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“This is an indispensable book for understanding the threat our country faces from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. McFaul is a candid and insightful guide to the history, personalities, and politics that continue to shape one of America’s most consequential relationships.” (Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Secretary of State under Barack Obama (2009-2013))
"Mike McFaul has lived history. In this terrific book, he recounts a pivotal time in U.S.-Russian relations, bringing the perspective of a central participant and one of America's finest scholars of Russian politics. This book will be valued by students, experts, historians and diplomats for years to come. It is a good read and an invaluable contribution at a crucial time." (Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush (2005-2009))
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- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unique insider account, John H. Sununu pays tribute to his former boss - an intelligent, thoughtful, modest leader - and his overlooked accomplishments. Though George H. W. Bush is remembered for orchestrating one of the largest and most successful military campaigns in history - the Gulf War - Sununu argues that conventional wisdom misses many of Bush's other great achievements.
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Outstanding Biograpy
- By Warren Brookes on 07-25-15
By: John H. Sununu
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Asia's Reckoning
- China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century
- By: Richard Mcgregor
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard McGregor's Asia's Reckoning is a compelling account of the widening geopolitical cracks in a region that has flourished under an American security umbrella for more than half a century. The toxic rivalry between China and Japan, two Asian giants consumed with endless history wars and ruled by entrenched political dynasties, is threatening to upend the peace underwritten by Pax Americana since World War II.
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Good info to learn, but...
- By Neal on 02-24-18
By: Richard Mcgregor
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When the World Seemed New
- George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War
- By: Jeffrey A. Engel
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 20 hrs and 7 mins
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The end of the Cold War was the greatest shock to international affairs since World War II. In that perilous moment, Saddam Hussein chose to invade Kuwait, China cracked down on its own pro-democracy protesters, and regimes throughout Eastern Europe teetered between democratic change and new authoritarians. Not since FDR in 1945 had a US president faced such opportunities and challenges. As the presidential historian Jeffrey Engel reveals in this hard-to-pause history, behind closed doors, George H. W. Bush rose to the occasion brilliantly.
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The Right Man at the Right Time in the Right Job
- By A. M. on 09-12-18
By: Jeffrey A. Engel
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The Crusader
- Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism
- By: Paul Kengor
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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God and Ronald Reagan made presidential historian Paul Kengor's name as one of the premier chroniclers of the life and career of the 40th president. With The Crusader, Kengor returns with the one book about Reagan that has not been written: the story of his lifelong crusade against communism and of his dogged and ultimately triumphant effort to overthrow the Soviet Union.
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Whether you like Reagan or not....
- By Daryl on 10-20-13
By: Paul Kengor
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The Restless Wave
- Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations
- By: John McCain, Mark Salter
- Narrated by: John McCain, Beau Bridges
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In a time when Washington, DC and the country are more polarized than they have been for decades, John McCain is the rare public figure who has earned the respect of people on both sides of the aisle. He is a model for bipartisanship and political integrity. In his 40 years in politics, McCain has never been afraid to buck trends or ruffle a few feathers. His words are more important today than ever.
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A true patriot
- By Diane Peresie on 05-29-18
By: John McCain, and others
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Democracy
- Stories from the Long Road to Freedom
- By: Condoleezza Rice
- Narrated by: Grace Angela Henry
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
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From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans. In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy.
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A Case for Democracy
- By Jean on 05-18-17
By: Condoleezza Rice
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Confront and Conceal
- Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
- By: David E. Sanger
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Three and a half years ago, David Sanger’s book The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power described how a new American president came to office with the world on fire. Now, just as the 2012 presidential election battle begins, Sanger follows up with an eye-opening, news-packed account of how Obama has dealt with those challenges, relying on innovative weapons and reconfigured tools of American power to try to manage a series of new threats.
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Sobering reminder on what the presidency requires
- By Marilyn on 09-03-12
By: David E. Sanger
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Duty
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- By: Robert M. Gates
- Narrated by: George Newbern, Robert M. Gates
- Length: 25 hrs and 38 mins
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From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he'd long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.
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The Fighting Season
- By Cynthia on 01-28-14
By: Robert M. Gates
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Reagan's Secret War
- The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster
- By: Martin Anderson, Annelise Anderson
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Martin and Annelise Anderson drew upon their access to more than eight million classified documents housed within the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. What emerges from this treasure trove of material is evidence that Reagan intended from his first days in office to bring down the Soviet Union, that he considered eliminating nuclear weapons his paramount objective, and that he was the principal architect of the policies that brought the Soviets to the nuclear-arms negotiating table.
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IMPORTANT HISTORICAL INFORMATION
- By Byron on 06-19-12
By: Martin Anderson, and others
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Lessons from the Edge
- A Memoir
- By: Marie Yovanovitch
- Narrated by: Marie Yovanovitch
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time she became US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch had seen her share of corruption, instability, and tragedy in developing countries. But it came as a shock when, in early 2019, she was recalled from her post after a smear campaign by President Trump’s personal attorney and his associates—men operating outside of normal governmental channels, and apparently motivated by personal gain. Her courageous participation in the subsequent impeachment inquiry earned Yovanovitch the nation’s respect, and her dignified response to the president’s attacks won our hearts.
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Heroic patriot's amazing story
- By Victoria Eriksson on 03-19-22
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Reagan
- The Life
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 31 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon, celebrated for transforming the American domestic agenda and playing a crucial part in ending communism in the Soviet Union. In his masterful new biography, H. W. Brands argues that Reagan, along with FDR, was the most consequential president of the 20th century. Reagan took office at a time when the public sector, after a half century of New Deal liberalism, was widely perceived as bloated and inefficient, an impediment to personal liberty.
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Very little about Reagan
- By Jack Merritt on 07-30-15
By: H. W. Brands
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Magnificent Delusions
- Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding
- By: Husain Haqqani
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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A character-driven history that describes the bizarrely ill-suited alliance between America and Pakistan, written by a uniquely insightful participant: Pakistan's former ambassador to the US. The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension, and always has been. Pakistan - to American eyes - has gone from being a stabilizing friend to an essential military ally to a seedbed of terror.
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It it Delusions or Sleeping with the Enemy
- By Shah Alam on 01-28-14
By: Husain Haqqani
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What listeners say about From Cold War to Hot Peace
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Carole Williams
- 09-30-18
Disappointing
Informative about US/Russia relations, but I found the presentation belligerent, giving McFaul a mantel of self-centeredness.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Rob
- 08-31-18
Balanced and Knowledgable
Post-Trump there is a worrying amount of prople making wild speculation on equally worrying facts. Something big is going on in Russia, but we're stuck with pundits making baseless claims about how half of the US was brainwashed by Putin himself. This book is essential for getting a more knowledgable insight into what is actually going on from someone who has actually been on the ground. The details about Russian influence will be boiled down to facts in time, and until then this look at the events leading up to this point can help one put those facts into context. The author is clearly pro-democracy like most of us, but he eyes the other side with a level headedness rather than seeing Bond villains under every rock. Buy this book to understand US/Russian relations.
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- Mahesh
- 08-06-24
A realist
A good read. A realist liberal who prioritizes American interests rather than morals and hard truths.
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- Matt
- 01-11-19
Exceptionally written from a unique perspective
Facinating complication of unique experiences from Michael McFaul during a time of ups and downs of U.S. - Russian relations.
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- Danielle
- 01-29-19
Super informative and interesting.
Full overview & analysis of US/ Russia relations for last 30 years. McFaul is a true Russia expert.
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- Michael Moore
- 09-13-18
How "Reset" Worked until Putin Blew It Apart
Excellent account of the challenges and disappointments in dealing with Russia since the fall of the USSR. Mr. McFaul specialized in Russia as a professor at Stanford, lived in Russia during the time of the collapse of the USSR and was active in encouraging democratic reform in Russia. He has great fondness for the country and its people.
After service in the Obama White House, where he was one of the policy leaders driving a number of successes in improving relations with Russia during the Medvedev presidency, he then took the post as US Russian Ambassador. Unfortunately, this was the time when Putin re-took the Russian presidency and pursued a policy of confrontational policies with the West and repressive policies against democratic reform in Russia. McFaul describes all of this with the context of an able historian but with the added benefit of his personal experience in Russia and with Russian government figures.
The personal experience includes the harassment he and his Embassy staff were subjected to by the secret police and the nasty propaganda campaign that the Putin government waged against him in the public media during his time as Ambassador. It all makes for a vivid and fascinating story. Highly recommend this book for gaining a much deeper appreciation for the complexities and difficulties in our relations with Russia.
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- J.B.
- 08-03-18
From Russia With Love
From Cold War to Hot Peace, An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, written by Michael McFaul, and read by L. J. Ganser. This is a wonderful and complete retelling of international foreign policy during the Obama presidency. You learn how issues become the focus of an administration, at least those issues in which Professor McFaul was involved, how the problems are defined, and how those delineations depend more on the prior learning or experience of the president and his experts rather than some mathematical formula. Hint: Learn the meaning of the word gestalt before you take on this read.
Now, my recommendation is not to purchase and read (listen) to the book unless you are a learned and avid political scientist or international historian with an interest in inter-nation dealings. This is not a titillating book in and of itself. This is though, a truly learned outlay of what happened, why, what worked, and what did not.
The subject matters covered were, Prof. McFaul’s education and early professorial years, the Russian Reset at the beginning of the Obama presidency, the Arab Spring, the Libya conflict, Prof. McFaul’s return to Russia as Ambassador, Russian civic unrest, Putin’s return to the Russian Federacy presidency, the taking of Crimea and the unrest in the Ukrainian, in almost all those reviews, not only do we get a readout on Obama’s actions and thoughts, but we also get a readout on Putin’s position, and a deep set of suppositions as to what might have been Putin’s thoughts and perspective; as well as his objectives. I found particularly interesting, how Putin filled the Russian people, with venality with which Putin poisons the Russian people with hatred for others. Something like our present presidency here in the U.S., but in Putin’s case he controls all forms of information to his people. Fascinating. Oh yes, and there is a long discussion on Professor McFaul’s use of social media, including Twitter, a never before used diplomatic tool was a kick.
I came to this book having great respect for the analysis of Professor McFaul. After the read, my appreciation of his gift of political analysis has only increased. He put the book together as a story, which does not read like a novel, but rather a history of his interchange with Russia and its beloved people. It is an analysis of what happened and perhaps why.
At the end of the book, a little over one hour of reading, Professor McFaul provides a wrap up of what is the status of U.S. Russian affairs, how we got here, what should we do from here. Those of you that have followed the Professor will be surprised at his new-found perspective. The book is worth reading (if you are a political science nerd). Its last hour plus is essential if you want to know where we go from here in U.S. vs. Russia. Nevertheless, I still intend to re-read all my Dostoyevsky.
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18 people found this helpful
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- Kalutha
- 08-13-18
A Personal and Historical View of Putin's Russia
I wanted to listen to this book as a result of Putin's request at the Helsinki summit for several Americans to be "interviewed," with McFaul among them. This is a very detailed account of recent decades in Russia, by a person who has been involved in the promotion of democracy there, and who was ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration. I learned a lot about the reasons why the movement toward democracy in Russia did not last, about Putin's rise to power, about his belief system/paranoia, and about several historical events in recent decades, including the annexation of Crimea, the invasion of Ukraine, etc. This book is most appropriate for people who are history buffs, and who want to know the inner workings of certain aspects of government and diplomacy. The book is quite detailed, and not every listener will want to hear this much detail, I would imagine. As a result of listening to the book, I developed tremendous respect for the author and his dedication to working toward the development and support of democracy. The narrator is quite good. There are numerous Russian names throughout the book, and although I don't speak Russian, his pronunciation sounded quite skilled. I am glad that I listened to the book in order to understand more about the current situation with Russia; I am listening to several books on this topic, and appreciated the fact that this one included a personal perspective.
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- kdh
- 04-24-19
Putin
This is a great source to understand Russia and Putin over the last 20 years to today. Putin is KGB and should not be trusted or believed. He will not change.
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- Tammie The Great
- 10-06-18
Michael McFaul
This book reminds us, Vladimir Putin has and never will be our friend. And even more important we must never allow Russians ie. Vladimir Putin the outrageous request to interrogate ANY American! He is a thug who kills anyone who speak against him. He even kills in other countries!
They can have Trump!
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2 people found this helpful