Henry Richard Maar III gives the reader the most definitive study yet of the nuclear weapons freeze movement and its impact on the arms race in the 1980s. (Full disclosure: As the chief foreign policy adviser to Senator Edward M. Kennedy from 1977 to 1984, I wrote the U.S. Senate resolution favoring a nuclear freeze, which Senator Kennedy introduced jointly with Senator Mark O. Hatfield, a Republican from Oregon.) The book provides broad discussion of the U.S. and European peace movements, covering the policies of the Reagan administration, the role of Congress, debates within the Catholic Church, broader cultural and political trends, and the outcomes in national politics and U.S.-Soviet diplomacy.
Maar traces the freeze movement's evolution from a grassroots movement to a national vehicle countering the Reagan administration. He is especially persuasive in his discussion of policy and politics. He convincingly highlights the freeze movement's catalytic role in helping...