Early in his highly readable chronicle of Ronald Reagan's role in the end of the Cold War, Mann mentions how Reagan reused the Russian proverb "Trust, but verify," one of the few Russian phrases he knew, so often it annoyed Mikhail Gorbechev. Mann himself repeats Reagan's love of and use of this phrase so often that it becomes easy to see why Gorbechev got so annoyed.

This is one of the flaws in what is otherwise an excellent book. Mann repeats himself a lot, offering the same anecdotes and quotes multiple times, and includes each official's title every time their name seems to come up. He also spends a good deal of his space discussing how important the "tear down this wall" speech was, and while he makes a good case for how important any speech can be for any president, it does seem to be a ridiculously long section just to discuss how one speech works, even giving one chapter that is mostly a verbatim reprint of the speech, an act that caused me to drop my rating another star, when the sections detailing American and Soviet behind-the-scenes diplomacy were much more interesting.

That said, Mann's central premise that both the American left and right are wrong about Reagan's role in the end of the Cold War is a worthy one and he makes a strong case. This may not be the definitive book on Reagan and the Cold War, but given that Mann shows how great Reagan's policies were resisted by many who would do nothing but praise him today, I would think that alone would make this a must-read for anyone who has an interest in that time in American and world history.