Book Review: 'The Korean War'
©1987 Simon & Schuster (U.S. Edition) On November 1, 1987, Simon & Schuster published the U.S. edition of The Korean War, a one-volume history of a 1950-53 conflict that pitted the United States, South Korea, and 20 member-states against North Korea, the People's Republic of China, and - behind the scenes - Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union in a bloody struggle for control of the Korean Peninsula. Written by British historian Max Hastings and originally published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph, The Korean War examines the controversial clash of arms that is sometimes known in the U.S. as "the forgotten war" from a British perspective, with a sharp focus on the American, Soviet, and Chinese foreign and defense policies in the early stages of the Cold War that made the war inevitable. In retrospect, the Korean War is eclipsed by the conflict - World War II - that came before it and the one that came after it: Vietnam. The former was a titanic struggle th...