Summits Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century

The Cold War dominated world history for nearly half a century, locking two superpowers in a global rivalry that only ended with the Soviet collapse. The most decisive moments of twentieth-century diplomacy occurred when world leaders met face to facefrom the mishandled summit in Munich, 1938, which brought on the Second World War, to Ronald Reagan's remarkable chemistry with Mikhail Gorbachev at Geneva in 1985. In Summits, eminent diplomatic historian David Reynolds takes us alongside the statesmen who stood, if only briefly, on top of the world, offering valuable lessons as we find ourselves confronting once again a war without end.

David Reynolds is a professor of international history at Cambridge University. He is the author of eight books, including In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (2004), which was awarded the Wolfson Prize, Britain’s highest honor for the writing of history, and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He lives in Cambridge, England.