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Title details for Tear Down This Wall by Romesh Ratnesar - Available

Tear Down This Wall

A City, a President, and the Speech that Ended the Cold War

by Romesh Ratnesar
Wes Bleed
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan addressed a crowd of 20,000 people in West Berlin in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. The words he delivered that afternoon would become among the most famous in presidential history. "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate," Reagan said. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!" In this riveting and fast-paced audio book, Romesh Ratnesar provides an account of how Reagan arrived at his defining moment and what followed from it. The audio is based on interviews with numerous former Reagan administration officials and American and German eyewitnesses to the speech, as well as recently declassified State Department documents and East German records of the president's trip. Ratnesar provides new details about the origins of Reagan's speech and the debate within the administration about how to issue the fateful challenge to Gorbachev. Tear Down This Wall re-creates the charged atmosphere surrounding Reagan's visit to Berlin and explores the speech's role in bringing about the fall of the Berlin Wall less than two years later. At the heart of the story is the relationship between two giants of the late twentieth century: Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Departing from the view that Reagan "won" the Cold War, Ratnesar demonstrates that both Reagan and Gorbachev played indispensable roles in bringing about the end of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. It was the trust that Reagan and Gorbachev built in each other that allowed them finally to overcome the suspicions that had held their predecessors back. Calling on Gorbachev to tear down the Wall, in Reagan's mind, might actually encourage him to do it. Reagan's speech in Berlin was more than a good sound bite. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we can now see the speech as the event that marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 5, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781608146048
      • File size: 211369 KB
      • Duration: 07:20:21

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      One of the climactic moments of the twentieth century, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked a period of new hope and freedom, the end of the Cold War. Reporter Romesh Ratnesar recounts details of the negotiations between the Reagan administration and the Soviet Union that led up to the reunification of Berlin. He specifically covers Reagan's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate. The production opens with an insightful interview between narrator Wes Bleed and Ratnesar in which the author discusses his motivation for writing the book. Following this discussion is a recording of Reagan's speech and then the text itself, which Bleed narrates with vigor and alacrity. His clear, friendly voice suits the book's historical tone. Further, his reading captures the feelings of hope and determination that prevailed during this critical period in history. D.M.W. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 31, 2009
      Standing before Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in 1987, President Reagan delivered his famous challenge to Soviet Premier Gorbachev: to tear down the wall dividing East and West Berlin. Within two years, the wall crumbled, and the U.S.S.R. soon followed. Time
      magazine deputy managing editor Ratnesar has mined American and East German archives to produce a lively, impressively detailed history of the iconic speech. Despite impeccable conservative credentials, Reagan considered avoiding nuclear war more important than defeating communism. This only became obvious in 1985, when Gorbachev assumed the Soviet leadership. Over the course of several meetings, the two leaders developed a rapport and announced disarmament agreements that distressed Reagan's hard-line supporters. In early 1987, speechwriter Peter Robinson produced a draft containing the “tear down this wall” statement, followed by a tortuous four months of innumerable drafts and quarrels with high officials who considered it unnecessarily offensive. In the end, Reagan liked the phrase, so it stayed. Being the world's sole superpower has brought America little satisfaction, so readers should enjoy this slim, lucid account of a time when events turned out brilliantly.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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