If you're trying to get a reasonably balanced one volume history of the Cold War, you might want to check out Odd Arne Westad's The Cold War: A World History, or his earlier The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Westad is important because he has helped shift a lot of the focus of the Cold War from Europe (and specifically from Washington and Moscow) to Latin America, Asia and Africa, where the conflict was often very hot, and had numerous actors across the globe involving themselves for specific goals.
I guess I have to mention John Lewis Gaddis and his work, as Gaddis is considered to be the "dean of Cold War historians", but he approaches it very much from an American point of view (and a triumphalist one at that). His We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History was pretty well received when it came out, but only covers the 1946-1962 period. His The Cold War: A New History is a newer one volume book that covers the entire Cold War: on the plus side it's a very concise introduction that covers the major events of that 50 year period (he wrote it for his undergrad students, especially once they started to be too young to have personal memories of the Cold War), but on the other hand it's very triumphalist and has very little to say about the world outside of Europe and the US (and gets pretty far into Gaddis' personal and political opinions in the later chapters of the book).
I am assuming you are American. James Patterson's Grand Expectations and Restless Giant are a good start. They are absolute tomes, but they deal with a little bit of everything in post-WWII American history. James Patterson is also an absolute titan of a scholar, top-notch.
There are also topical works:
**Vietnam War-**George Herring's America's Longest War (older, but still widely considered the best)
The Sixties: Weisbrot and Mackenzie's The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s
Kevin Boyle's The Shattering: America in the 1960s (Boyle is known for his narrative skills)
The Seventies: Jefferson Cowie's Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
Cold War: Mary L. Dudziak's Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
1968: Kyle Longley's LBJ's 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America's Year of Upheaval\
Michael Nelson's Resilient America: Electing Nixon in 1968, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government
These are a few to get you started. Admittedly, they are mostly political histories, but that's my particular field so I have my biases.
I'm currently reading and loving Ronnie D. Lipschitz's Cold War Fantasies: Film, Fiction, and Foreign Policy! It's kind of a cool look at Cold War era politics through film and novels from or set in the time period. If you're interested in movies, def give it a shot!