Ronald Reagan -- Plans for Armageddon -- The Reaganauts -- The American challenge -- Symptoms recognized, cures rejected -- Cracks in the ice : Eastern Europe -- The Soviet quarantine -- NATO and its friends -- World communism and the peace movement -- In the Soviet waiting room -- Mikhail Gorbachev -- The Moscow reform team -- One foot on the accelerator -- To Geneva -- Presenting the Soviet package -- American rejection -- The stalled interaction -- The Strategic Defense Initiative -- The lost summer -- Summit in Reykjavik -- The month of muffled drums -- The Soviet package untied -- The big four -- Getting to know the enemy -- Sticking points -- Grinding out the treaty -- Calls to Western Europe -- Eastern Europe : perplexity and protest -- The leaving of Afghanistan -- Spokes in the wheel -- Reagan's window of departure -- The fifth man -- The other continent : Asia -- Epitaph for world communism -- Revolution in Eastern Europe -- The Malta Summit -- Redrawing the map of Europe -- The new Germany -- Baltic triangle -- The third man breaks loose -- A new world order? -- Endings -- Postscript.