Reagan at Reykjavik is a good read and has won praise from eminent reviewers including Henry Kissinger, Senator John McCain, and the writer Walter Isaacson. But is it good history? Is it literature? Is it journalism?
I crossed paths with Kenneth Adelman on numerous occasions when I was covering foreign policy in Washington, DC, for United Press International in the 1970s and 1980s. He was director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, having served previously as an assistant to the secretary of defense. It seemed to me then that his main goal was to block Soviet-slanted proposals rather than to reach agreements.
In 1986, as the Moscow bureau chief for U.S. News and World Report, I had the good fortune of covering the 1986 Reykjavik summit, which Adelman viewed from the inside as a member of Ronald Reagan's official delegation. I had no idea then that he had...