That's because history books tend to cover exciting events, and not the daily doldrums of life. Revolution and war typically have long preambles, most of which

That's because history books tend to cover exciting events, and not the daily doldrums of life. Revolution and war typically have long preambles, most of which gets glossed over in favor of the actual event itself. The Cold War was a decades-long preamble that failed to lead to an actual war, and that was far from being stagnant. Society is ever-changing, but often in subtle ways that eventually coalesce to the "big-bang" event written about in history books. Much in the same way as technology -- it took many incremental improvements to many technologies to finally allow Apple to build the iPhone.