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Synopsis

‘It is not easy to see how matters could be worsened by a parley at the summit.’ Winston Churchill coined the term in 1950 but the temptation of summitry has been around for centuries. In this incisive and readable book, David Reynolds takes us from the Babylonians right up to Blair and Bush. But the core of his account is six case studies of modern summitry – made possible by air travel, made necessary by weapons of mass destruction, and made into household news by the mass media. Using the records of the meetings, he explores how world leaders saw their opponents and how they played their own cards. He also reconstructs the enormous physical and emotional pressures upon them during encounters that could spell life or death for millions.

The pioneer of modern summitry was Neville Chamberlain, whose dramatic flights to meet Hitler in September 1938 set patterns and taught lessons for all who followed. Some of the meetings involve a trio of leaders – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta in 1945; Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David in 1978 – but the heart of the story are three superpower duels that span the Cold War.

Drawing on newly-opened archives, Reynolds examines the disastrous face-off between Kennedy and Khrushchev at Vienna in 1961, which helped spark the Cuban missile crisis and America’s disastrous war in Vietnam. He looks at the Moscow summit between Nixon and Brezhnev in 1972, which began a promising era of détente but whose Machiavellian negotiation by Nixon and Kissinger also helped ensure détente’s decline. By contrast, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit at Geneva in 1985 began a series of summits that brought the Cold War to a peaceful end. From it Reynolds draws larger lessons for successful summitry.

Written with verve and insight by a prize-winning international historian, Summits takes us into the minds of statesmen caught up in a bizarre mixture of competition and camaraderie as they stand, for a moment, on top of the world.

Reviews

Interview

Publishing Director Stuart Proffitt on Summits by David Reynolds

How far do individuals affect the course of history? Can world leaders shape events or are they the pawns of larger historical and geo-political forces? These are the questions underlying one of my favourite history books of the year, David Reynolds's tremendous new book Summits: Six Meetings Which Shaped the Twentieth Century. Reynolds examines, in gripping detail, six meetings between twentieth century world leaders, the circumstances which led up to them, how the dynamics of the face-to-face encounters went, and what the lasting impact was in each case, to give us an entirely new perspective on some of the key moments in twentieth century history.

When Neville Chamberlain announced he would fly to Munich in 1938 to try to resolve the intense international crisis over the Sudetenland with Herr Hitler, his initiative caused a storm partly because no world leader had ever tried to do such a thing by a dramatic personal intervention - crises had been resolved at a distance, by ambassadors and the exchange of messages. What's more, Chamberlain himself had never been in an aeroplane before. David Reynolds takes you into a hotel room in Godesberg with Chamberlain and Hitler, and you feel the tension and the pressure of events as in no other account.

Reynolds goes on to do the same for Kennedy and Krushchev in Vienna in 1961, a meeting which helped spark the Cuban Missile Crisis and America's catastrophic war in Vietnam; Nixon and Brezhnev in Moscow in 1972; Begin, Sadat and Carter at Camp David in 1978; and the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting at Geneva in 1985 which started the series of summits which brought the Cold War to a peaceful end. This is a history from an entirely new perspective, from one of the emerging stars of British history writing. His last book won the Wolfson Prize and this one will be a three-part BBC Four series. Anyone who enjoys reading about the history of the twentieth century and being made to think about it freshly should love this book.

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