On 1st September 1983, a Soviet military pilot tracked and shot down an unarmed Korean airliner, with the loss of all aboard, including a number of Americans. The outcry was fierce; the USA and the USSR seemed locked in a deepening spiral of hostility. Yet less than five years later, the world watched Ronald Reagan stroll through Red Square with Mikhail Gorbachev after signing a major arms reduction treaty. From hatred to something approaching friendship - this book offers an account of one of history's great turning points. Apart from covering, as a journalist, many of the meetings and events dealt with in the book, the author interviewed many of the key figures on both sides.