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When he traveled to Berlin in 1987, President Ronald Reagan said famously, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” And while the United States certainly played an important role in the end of the Cold War, there were other (arguably more significant) factors at work. In his book The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Simon & Schuster, 9/09), author Michael Meyer ’74 contends that domestic resistance movements and certain key figures within the USSR at the time – in particular Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh – were the true impetuses behind the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. In so doing, Meyer rejects the “common knowledge” interpretation of Cold War history and uncovers hitherto-undervalued people, events, and perspectives.

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What exactly is a green city? What does it mean to say that San Francisco is greener than Houston, or that Vancouver is a green city while Beijing is not? When does urban growth lower environmental quality, and when does it produce environmental gains? These questions drive Matthew Kahn's exploration of the relationship between urban growth and sustainable development.

Guyana (formerly the colony British Guiana) gained its independence in the 1960’s. The U.S. government saw in this move the possibility of another communist state in Latin America, this one under the leadership of Marxist Cheddi Jagan. In U.S. Intervention, Rabe suggests that the CIA was responsible for funding the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that forced Jagan from office in 1964. The U.S.-supported leader Forbes Burnham gained power and went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population.

In The Contracted World, Peter Meinke brings us new poems and old, including in this collection work from four of his previous volumes. The poems show what it is like to live and grow up in America; they are full of images of “love, nature, cities, sports, war, and peace” as well as grief, confusion, and death. “Despite feelings of anger and loneliness, the narrator speaks to us in a personal, accessible, and often humorous voice.”

Ericson gives an “extensively annotated catalog” of works both by Pound and about him; McWhirter prefaces the work with an illustration and highly informative sketch of the poet.

This collection of essays expresses Henry Adams’s interest in knowledge and his need to clarify the role of critical intelligence in public life. At the turn of the century, Adams saw a new world, where the place of the mind was redefined by technology and geopolitical conflict. Each essay affirms, in one way or another, that to study Adams is to discover his continuing and astonishing relevance.

Leading Leaders will tell you, as the title suggests, how to deal with influential, talented, and valuable people. The problem is that, being all of the above, they are not extremely tractable, nor extremely cooperative. Salacuse shows the reader how to “leverage the expertise of the elites that work in and around any organization, and how to bring strong personalities and opinions together while leaving the common power struggles and politics behind.” Salacuse is the Henry J. Baker Professor of Law and former dean of the Fletcher School of Law at Tufts University. He has served as executive, consultant, Wall Street lawyer, and director of several mutual funds listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Rath’s “talk-story” is a memoir; a story for himself and other alumni of the Hawaiian institute the Kamehameha School for Boys. It is also, says the University of Hawaii Press, a “love affair” between the author and his school.

Launching the new series of Historical Dictionaries of U.S. Diplomacy, this volume provides a convenient introduction to a critical period of American diplomacy. The half-century from 1861 to 1914 formed a crucial time in the development of the American approach to the world, for the United States laid the foundations for its 20th century foreign policy. While the famed Monroe Doctrine insisted that no foreign power meddle in the American continent, it did not stop the U.S. from waging war against Spain, mixing in conflicts in Cuba, Chile, and Mexico, nor in backing independence for Panama, all the while acquiring smaller Pacific islands.