Author Description

By any reckoning, James Baker's years as Secretary of State contained some of the most pivotal events of the second half of the twentieth century, and few men played as critical a role in so many of them as Baker himself. In this candid, revealing account, Baker uses his unique perspective to take us inside those events and the personalities involved in them: the collapse of Communism, the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet Union itself; the reunification of Germany; the end of conflict in Central America; the repression in Tiananmen Square; the invasion of Panama; the birth of freedom in South Africa; the remarkable negotiations behind the coalition-building of the Gulf War; and the even more remarkable talks that led Israelis and Arabs to sit down at the same table for the first time after decades of bloody conflict. In the process, Baker gives us unparalleled insights into the sometimes delicate, sometimes rough-and-tumble art - and politics - of diplomacy, and intimate portraits of the leaders whose styles he came to know so well, individuals such as Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Thatcher, Mitterrand, Kohl, Shamir, Mubarak, Assad, Kings Fahd and Hussein, Genscher, Li Peng, the staunchly humanistic Shevardnadze, and Baker's friend and mentor, President George Bush. In all, this is a stunning work, an invaluable addition to the leading chronicles of our time.