Ken Adelman’s masterpiece, running to a quite manageable 375 pages including notes and a bibliography, uses the October 1986 meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev as the springboard to prove his thesis that it was indeed the catalyst for ending the 40-year Cold War.

Adelman was able to write what resembles a “You Were There” storyline because his is the viewpoint of someone who was actually there. The reader rides the rollercoaster of the emotional ups and downs that were experienced during negotiations with the Russians by the team that accompanied Reagan as well as the president himself. Yet owing to the hours-long face-offs between the two heads-of-state and between U.S. and Russia team members, the weekend that was initially touted to be a failure would later turn out to be a monumental victory, not only in the area of arms control, the author’s sphere of expertise, but also in the freeing of millions from the tyranny of Communism.

The author takes a break from describing the political drama being played out at Hofdi House to report the role of the international press in promoting Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, as she traveled about the city of Reykjavik. Of course, even in the absence of her counterpart, Nancy Reagan, the press created a mini-crisis by printing Raisa’s suggestion that Nancy had not come because she was not well. This necessitated a response from afar that she, Nancy, was quite well. Adelman offers as an excuse the lack of news coming from the arms discussions for the press turning for its news gathering assignments to Raisa and other peripheral matters.

Amid the tension brought about by the lack of progress at the negotiating table, Adelman interjects humor into his narrative at appropriate intervals. One such humorous interlude (at least from this reader’s perspective) he shares involves team members, including the author, gathering for a planning session in a secure room within the U.S. Embassy known as the “bubble.” According to his account, the room was barely large enough to contain their handful, when Reagan appeared. Being obvious that he intended to stay, Adelman dutifully offered his chair, then took a seat on the floor next to the “presidential knees.”

But Adelman’s book is much more than an in-depth description along with his analysis/interpretation of the events of that weekend; rather, it is a tribute to Ronald Reagan – his fortitude, tenacity, and dedication to the goal of winning the freedom of the millions under the oppressive yoke of Communism, an ‘evil’ system he desired to send to the ‘ash heap of history.’

To this end, the author recounts Reagan’s famous challenge to Gorbachev in June 1987 at the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin, then-West Germany, to “tear down this wall” as well as the eventual outcome of this and the nine months earlier meeting – later to be recognized for the summit that it was – in Reykjavik, when in November 1989 the wall dividing the oppressed from the free, fell.

There were those such as Strobe Talbott and even the U.S. ambassdor in Moscow at the time, Jack Matlock, who, the author informs us, did not accept that the policy issues discussed, at times in a confrontational manner, and the relationships formed at Reykjavik had any bearing on the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, it seems to this writer that approaching objectively the timeline from early October 1986 to early November 1989, with early June 1987 serving as the intermediate influence, should lead to the obvious conclusion that Reagan’s holding firm on the SDI program at Reykjavik and calling on Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in Berlin were primary factors leading to the fall of the “evil empire.”

Ken Adelman is a gifted, entertaining writer, who is to be commended for accepting the challenge to author a book worthy of its subject, our 40th President.