At The Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War

by Michael R . Beschloss (Author), StrobeTalbott (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.35

  The end of the Cold War was the most momentous event of our time. This book reveals the secret messages and private transactions between George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev that went on behind the scenes, including Bush's pledge not to press Gorbachev for Baltic independence, how the Soviet Union joined the Gulf War coalition and Bush's private warnings to the Russian president that he was about to be overthrown. From early in 1989, the authors were granted unprecedented access to classified US and Soviet documents, cables, telephone transcripts and diplomatic records. With novelistic detail they show Bush and Gorbachev behind closed doors as they fence with domestic foes and suspicious allies. They demonstrate how the greatest world leaders came to believe that their most dangerous opponents were no longer each other but forces within their own countries. As Beschloss and Talbott argue, their excessive reliance on each other contributed to Gorbachev's fall from power in December 1991 and Bush's own collapse less than a year later.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $3.35

  Offering a ringside seat for the last exchanges of the Cold War, this book provides an account of the deal that allowed George Bush to use military force against Saddam Hussein in exchange for a Middle-East peace conference on the Palestinian issue; and of James Baker's private assurance to Eduard Shevardnadze that the United States would understand Soviet use of force in the breakaway republics. Michael Beschloss is the author of The Crisis Years , Kennedy and Roosevelt and Mayday , and Strobe Talbott wrote Endgame Deadly Gambits and Master of the Game .