Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century

by David Reynolds (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $38.37

  The Cold War dominated world history for nearly half a century, locking two superpowers in a global rivalry that only ended with the Soviet collapse. The most decisive moments of twentieth-century diplomacy occurred when world leaders met face to face--from the mishandled summit in Munich, 1938, which brought on the Second World War, to Ronald Reagan's remarkable chemistry with Mikhail Gorbachev at Geneva in 1985. In Summits, eminent diplomatic historian David Reynolds takes us alongside the statesmen who stood, if only briefly, on top of the world, offering valuable lessons as we find ourselves confronting once again a war without end.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $4.53

  In this incisive and readable book, David Reynolds takes us from the Babylonians right up to Blair and Bush, but the core of his account is six case studies of modern summitry. Using the records of the meetings, he explores how world leaders saw their opponents and how they played their own cards. He also reconstructs the enormous physical and emotional pressures upon them during encounters that could spell life or death for millions. The pioneer of modern summitry was Neville Chamberlain, whose dramatic flights to meet Hitler in September 1938 set patterns and taught lessons for all who followed. Some of the meetings involve a trio of leaders - Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta in 1945; Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David in 1978 - but the heart of the story are three superpower duels that span the Cold War. Drawing on newly-opened archives, Reynolds examines the disastrous face-off between Kennedy and Khrushchev at Vienna in 1961, which helped spark the Cuban missile crisis and America's disastrous war in Vietnam. He looks at the Moscow summit between Nixon and Brezhnev in 1972, which began a promising era of detente but whose Machiavellian negotiation by Nixon and Kissinger also helped ensure detente's decline. By contrast, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit at Geneva in 1985 began a series of summits that brought the Cold War to a peaceful end. From it Reynolds draws larger lessons for successful summitry. Written with verve and insight by a prize-winning international historian, Summits takes us into the minds of statesmen caught up in a bizarre mixture of competition and camaraderie as they stand, for a moment, on top of the world.