As memories of the Cold War fade, and worries about a new era of tense relations between Russia and the West emerge, the moment is ripe to revisit the decades when the United States and the Soviet Union—the world’s two “super powers”—dictated geopolitical strategy, foreign policy, and economic stability.
There were many reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Russia, but one man in particular was able to conceive of a post-Communist future in which peace and prosperity might be shared with former enemies and adversaries. In Gorbachev: His Life and Times, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian William Taubman combines rigorous biographical research, compelling narrative skill, and extensive access to his subject to create a portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the most important political figures of the twentieth century.