The full scope of George Kennan's long life and vast influence is revealed by one of today's most important Cold War scholars. Yale historian Gaddis began this magisterial history almost 30 years ago; the result is a remarkably revealing view of how this greatest of Cold War strategists came to doubt his strategy and always doubted himself.

When Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met in Yalta in February 1945, Hitler's armies were on the run, and victory was imminent. The Big Three wanted to draft a blueprint for a lasting peace, but instead they set the stage for a forty-four division of Europe into Soviet and Western spheres of influence. After fighting side by side for nearly four years, their political alliance was beginning to fracture. Although the most dramatic Cold War confrontations...

"Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world...