The Human Factor tells the dramatic story about the part played by political leaders - particularly the three very different personalities of Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher - in ending the standoff that threatened the future of all humanity

• Introduction


• PART 1


• 1: The Cold War and its Dangers


• 2: The Making of Mikhail Gorbachev


• 3: Gorbachev's Widening Horizons


• 4: The Rise of Ronald Reagan


• 5: Reagan's First Term


• 6: Margaret Thatcher: The Moulding of the 'Iron Lady'


• 7: Thatcher and the Turn to Engagement with Communist Europe


• PART 2


• 8: Breaking the ice (1985)


• 9: Nuclear Fallout: Chernobyl and Reykjavik (1986


• 10: Building trust (1987)


• 11: The End of the Ideological Divide (1988)


• 12: The End of the Cold War (1989)


• 13: Why the Cold War Ended When it Did


• 14: Unintended Consequences (1990)


• 15: Final Year - of the USSR and of Gorbachev's Power (1991)


• 16: Political Leadership and the End of the Cold War: Concluding Reflections


• Notes


• Index

Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy, and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of numerous books on the former Soviet Union and its demise, including The Gorbachev Factor (1996, also published by Oxford University Press) and The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009), both of which won both the Alec Nove Prize and the Political Studies Association's W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize for best politics book of the year. A leading authority on Mikhail Gorbachev, he was the first person to draw Margaret Thatcher's attention to Gorbachev (at a 1983 Chequers seminar) as a reform-minded likely future Soviet leader.