"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...

Describes the shocking event in 1960 when an U.S. spy plane was shot down in the Soviet Union just prior to a vital summit meeting.

Presidential historian Beschloss has brought us a saga about crucial times in America's history when a courageous president dramatically changed the future of the United States. Beschloss brings to life these flawed, complex men--and their wives, families, friends and foes, in an intimate, behind-the-scenes view of presidents coping with the supreme dilemmas of their lives. As he shows, none of these presidents was eager to incur ridicule, vilification...

The only President to record his private conversations from his first day in office, Lyndon Johnson ordered the tapes to be locked in a vault until at least the year 2023. But now they have been unsealed, providing a close up look at a President taking power such as we have never had before - from John F. Kennedy's murder in November 1963 to Johnson's campaign for a landslide victory. Michael Beschloss has transcribed and annotated the secretly recorded...