Excerpt:

On February 17, 1984, Paul Nitze decided that the arms race could wait. For the past two and a half years, he had led the negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union. But on this day he left that grave work in the early afternoon to dress in black tie and hop on a train to Princeton, New Jersey.

He was heading north to attend the 80th birthday party of a man who was both a dear friend and a bitter rival: George Kennan. Nitze had been Kennan's deputy on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in the late 1940s, and the two had worked together on some of the most important issues the country ever faced. They tried to reverse the partition of Germany; they helped write the Marshall Plan; they advised Harry Truman on whether to build a hydrogen bomb. And then, for 35 years, they had disagreed profoundly on the direction the country should take. Even at this moment, each believed that the other's views, if followed, could lead the United States to the ultimate catastrophe. Just three months ago, Nitze's arms talks had collapsed in a way that many people thought would invite war.

But this was a moment for two old friends---not for the quiet but ever-present terror that haunted those years.