Wilson has crafted a concise timeline of the events that led to the collapse of Communism, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the end of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. New scholarship has been brought to the story, notably, private correspondence, newly declassified documentation, and archival records.
The book was easy to read, and considering that this is a scholarly work, that is quite welcome, as scholarly works often tend to be a bit dry-this book was anything but dry. It also seemed to me to be devoid of much bias, which is a prerequisite for a successful historical work.
The major point being made here is that the events that ended the Cold War were not orchestrated, but took place rather serendipitously, as the title implies. In essence, the author makes a good case for his thesis, which utilizes diary entries (Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev etc), and archival documents to Illustrate how leaders of the U.S. and USSR compromised, and essentially took leaps of faith to get to the ultimate goal of ending the cold war, bringing the Soviets into the fold of the New World Order of economic, and political partnership, relying on a new found mutual trust in drastically cutting nuclear missile proliferation to all-time lows.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Cold War, or Post-WWII European politics and social history. The new documents used offer an interesting viewpoint on the American and Soviet cooperation towards ending the Cold War, and the thawing of US-Soviet relations. ( )