Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth - Couverture souple

MacGregor, Iain

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 147213057X ISBN 13 : 9781472130570

Editeur : Constable, 2019

Synopsis

Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie is a vivid and poignant exploration of the history surrounding the Berlin Wall through the lens of interwoven first-person experiences.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Iain MacGregor is a graduate of modern history, and a non-fiction publisher with over twenty-five years' experience of working with authors including Simon Schama and Max Hastings. His first book, To Hell on a Bike: Riding Paris-Roubaix, The Toughest Race in Cycling, was a love letter to cycling. It was published by Bantam Press in 2015 and was shortlisted for Cycling Book of the Year at the 2016 British Sports Book Awards.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

A powerful, fascinating, and ground-breaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the legendary and most important military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States and her allies confronted the USSR during the Cold War.

As tensions between east and west rose during the Cold War, East Germany committed $millions to the creation of the Berlin Wall in the early 1960s, an eleven-foot-high barrier that would evolve through the years to consist of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least ten thousand people attempted to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it, desperate to escape the repressive totalitarian East German regime for the freedom of the West.

In November 1989, the East German leadership buckled in the face of a civil revolt that culminated in half a million East Berliners demanding an end to the ban on free movement. The world's media flocked to capture the moment which, perhaps more than any other, signalled the end of the Cold War. The wall was opened, and then torn down, stone by stone. Checkpoint Charlie, the epicentre of global conflict for nearly three decades, was the location of the greatest jubilation as crowds flowed across the border.

As the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall approaches in 2019, Iain MacGregor captures the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped Berlin throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and USSR, highlighting such important global figures as JFK, Nikita Khrushchev, Reagan, Gorbachev and other leaders of the period. He also includes never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; lovers who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost family trying to escape over it; German, British, French, and Russian soldiers who guarded its checkpoints; CIA, MI6 and Stasi operatives who oversaw secret operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie. A brilliant work of historical journalism, Checkpoint Charlie is an invaluable record of this period.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Constable
• Date d'édition: 2019
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 147213057X
• ISBN 13: 9781472130570
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 352
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
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