The Washington Post published its Holiday Guide yesterday, featuring the Best Books of 2008. Included in "The World" section is Vladislav Zubok's A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. At the beginning of the year, Richard Rhodes reviewed Zubok's book along with Melvyn Leffler's For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War. Rhodes praised the richness of the "new information and fresh perspective" Zubok brings to the history of the Cold War. The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies...