On Christmas Day 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union. By the next day the USSR was officially no more and the USA had emerged as the world's sole superpower. Award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy presents a page-turning account of the preceding five months of drama, filled with failed coups d'etat and political intrigue. Honing in on this previously disregarded but crucial period and using recently declassified documents...

"In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation's military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail...

Drawing on new interviews and previously unavailable documents, Mann finally answers the troubling questions about Reagan's actual role in the crumbling of Soviet power; and concludes that by recognizing the significance of Gorbachev, Reagan helped bring the Cold War to a close.

"This is a story that you did not read in the newspapers. At the Highest Levels reveals a hitherto secret dimension of the most momentous event of our time: the end of the Cold War. Beschloss and Talbott show us the vital transactions that George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev made and concealed from the world: Bush's pledge not to press Gorbachev for Baltic independence, the manipulations for German unification, how the Soviet Union joined the Gulf War...