With this book, a major element of American history has been analyzed. The Cold War rages in American foreign policy and influences the evolution of the modern world. Containment Strategies describes American policy from the end of World War II to the present. Gaddis describes the policies of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, including policies influenced by others such as George Kennan, John Dulles, and Henry Kissinger. The author, John Lewis Gaddis, has written numerous books on the Cold War and is an avid researcher in the field. His other works include: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, The Long Peace: Investigations into the History of the Cold War, We Know Now: Rethinking the History of the Cold War, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, and The Cold War: A New History. Dr. Gaddis received his doctorate from the University of Texas in 1968; he is currently on leave, but he is a professor at Yale. In college, he focused on Cold War history. Gaddis is one of the few men to have written a comprehensive biography of George Kennan, and Gaddis even won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. Gaddis diligently studies many Cold War policies, starting with George Kennan and his original policies confinement. . He did not believe in making everyone like the United States, but rather believed that diplomacy should be managed based on the vital interests of the United States and situations that were not vital to American security. He believed that in order to consider what constituted a threat to the United States, there should be a standard as to what exactly should be considered to be in the interest of the United States, and all... middle of paper ......containment. By breaking confinement in this way, historians and researchers can consider confinement like never before. Instead of lockdowns all being seen as the same, Gaddis draws a distinction between the many presidents to prove the different types of lockdowns and how each president thought their type of lockdown would succeed in managing the spread of communism. Starting with Kennan, the first proponent of containment, and ending with Kissinger, who used a hybrid of many different approaches, the reader can fully understand the progress, both positive and negative. The book is essential reading for those interested in researching Cold War politics in the United States, as well as the policy decisions of many presidents throughout the Cold War, as the book is packed with sources, both primary and secondary..