| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Nigel J. Ashton. Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War: The Irony of Interdependence. (Contemporary History in Context.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2002. Pp. xiii, 288. $78.00.
This fine study of foreign policy during the early 1960s focuses on elites (white males in government) jockeying at conferences and in high-level communiqués. Nigel J. Ashton's book sloughs off trendiness in favor of a nuanced and fascinating (albeit traditional) look at a complex topic.	1
To be sure, Ashton is aware of new angles in diplomatic history. He briefly delves into the hidden layers of the relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Hamburgers served at the White House during discussions over Laos showed Macmillan, who disliked "meat sandwiches" (p. 3), that a cultural gulf separated the two nations. Transatlantic communications, furthermore, were helped by the advent of the scrambler telephone, which allowed for more fluid discussion, although because Kennedy never figured out the technology and constantly interrupted Macmillan, the common bond of English was never fully realized. Gendered language is addressed fleetingly, but the power of emotions is ever present in the book. Surprisingly, trade and financial issues—underlying factors in the Anglo-American relationship—appear only in passing, but commercial considerations receive provocative treatment in passages regarding nuclear arms when Ashton elucidates the style of aggressive American competitive impulses. More such revelations might have coaxed critical cultural historians to admit that diplomatic history has relevance, but they are not Ashton's concern.	. . .

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