The Cold War had seemed like  a permanent fixture in global  politics, and until its denouement, no Western or Soviet politician foresaw that the stand-off between the two superpowers - after decades  of struggle over every aspect of security, politics, economics and ideas  - would end in their lifetimes. Even after March 1985  when  Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union  it was not preordained that global  nuclear Armageddon could  or would be averted peaceably.

But just four years later, the Berlin Wall was dismantled and perestroika spread throughout the former Soviet bloc. It was a sea change  in world history, which resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Drawing on pioneering archival research, Robert Service's gripping new investigation of the final years of the Cold War pinpoints the astonishing relationships among President Ronald  Reagan  and Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary of State George Shultz and the USSR's last Foreign Affairs Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, who  found a way  to cooperate during times of extraordinary change  around the world. The story is of American pressure and
Soviet long-term decline and over-stretch. The End of the Cold War shows  how that small, skillful group of statesmen were determined to end the Cold War on their watch. In the process, they irreversibly transformed the global  geopolitical landscape.

Authoritative, compelling and meticulously researched, this is political history at its best.