"The Age of Great Shocks" introduces the reader to the last decades of the Cold War in the non-trivial light of energy policy. The oil crises of the 1970s. marked the entry of the energy problem into the forefront of world politics and became a significant factor in the changes in the bipolar order. The book shows how differently the United States and European countries responded to the challenges of energy shocks, what role third world states began to play on the world stage, and how the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) influenced the dynamics of the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Energy ties between the USSR and Western Europe went through the same stages of ups and downs as the policy of detente that determined relations between West and East in the 1970s. Significantly intensified, they became the object of "sanctions diplomacy" against the backdrop of a return to the classic Cold War in the early 1980s.