The Year that Changed the World

''Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'' This declamation by president Ronald Reagan when visiting Berlin in 1987 is widely cited as the clarion call that brought the Cold War to an end. The West had won, so this version of events goes, because the West had stood firm. American and Western European resoluteness had brought an evil empire to its knees.

Michael Meyer, in this extraordinarily compellin...