If anything defined the 20th century as the age of anxiety, it's the cold war with its ultimate no-win nuclear endgame. While conflicts in Korea and Vietnam dragged on, providing the traditional images of modern warfare, some of the conflict's most dangerous battles were invisible--tactical, intellectual, and fought primarily in the minds and war rooms of U.S. and Soviet leaders: Kennedy, Krushchev, Castro, Kissinger, Gorbachev, and Reagan. This 8-volume, 24-episode series, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, is a comprehensive history that examines the key events of the arc of the Soviet Union, from its birth to its fall, and provides a thorough analysis of what was going on behind closed doors. Informed by the stories of 500 eyewitnesses--from citizens and soldiers to historians and statesmen--and strengthened by painstaking reconstruction of archival historical film footage, CNN's Cold War is a heroic undertaking and a sweeping chronicle of the world's most fragile decades. --Susan Benson
