>> they are working on it. they are getting better but you know, the conversation i had was what would make vita happy? does it have to, you know, is it enough to get better or is it a shifting bench mark? they are working on it. and i am working on it. i keep promoting my female friends who are great writers like aster taylor to publish. vita has done great work in calling attention to it. they are grateful for it. i am only one woman but i tried to show up in harpers and urge

them to do so. they are working on it. thank you for bringing it up. other questions or comments or inside scoops on the "new york times"? we can go to the happy aimless milling about in a fabulous bookstore portion of the evening. if anybody wants me to sign anything i wrote or co-authored i will be here happy to do it. thank you so much for coming. [ applause ] >> thanks for coming. books are at the front and back and rebecca is staying and signing. thanks again.

>> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs online. click search and you can shea share anything you see by clicking share and collecting the format. booktv.org. up next, afterwards with guest host romesh ratnesar. his book "reagan at reykjavik" in which provides the meeting

between reagan and gorbachev. >> host: welcome and congrats on the book. the most obvious question is why now? what made you revisit this chapter of the cold war 28 years later? >> guest: well, because i have been thinking about it for 28 years. i was there. it was the most important weekend of my life and in many ways the most thrilling. i was telling people about it for a long time. then the movie started to be produced and i was executive producer of the movie with scott, the producer, and michael douglas playing reagan, and then that started about eight years ago. and i was involved in that way. and then the movie stalled and

this and that happened and on and on. and then i was thinking if this is a good story why don't i write it up. the counter argument is i wrote five books before and i decided it was enough for moses and enough for me. he retired and his sales were big. someone said an unsigned copy with a receipt from the bookstore was in the rare book section and i decided not to write anymore. this kept going and i decided why not. the more i looked into it the better it became. >> you say rbiieykjavireykjavik

system of the bankruptcy of the soviet union, the fact it was a dying secession of leaders and all that brought it down and nothing from the outside mattered at all. when you started to look into writing this book -- were there other books and historians and

par participants done their own? is there much out there? >> memoirs were done at the time time but no one dived in deep and no one had the notes but the american notes and the russian notes. that enabled you to see them raw. and to peek through the key hole of the little conference room in the lofty house. put your ear to the door and listen to what they said for ten and a half hours. i don't happen about you, but i never talked to anyone that long. they talked about the most important issues of the world for ten and a half hours. without notes, without talking points, without staff involvement, without memos and so, they must have felt, ronald

reagan must have felt this is more like me than any time in my pregnancy and mikhail gorbachev must have thought this is more like me than any time as general secretary. and ronald reagan's son said you get a good insight into this. he said do this and sign this but books don't show his mind at work and this does minute by minute and his character in play. >> host: where the documents you consulted? is this available to the general public if they want to go look at this stuff? >> guest: some is at the reagan library, some is put online, and some is at reykjavik and it is scattered around. the more wonderful story that

made this a wonderful story was first of all the story. this is a little weekend in a stormy weekend in october. with rain lasting at the window seal in a creaky old house in the middle of nowhere in the desolate spot and place, iceland, and said to be haunted. neighbors call it the haunted house or the ghost house. and even on the eve of the summit the prime minister said his family believed in ghost and if the house was haunted he thought ghost would be most welcome there. over a weekend, in this setting, the most amazing things happened. and they happened to two characters. mikhail gorbachev and ronald reagan who were the most

interesting characters of the 20th century. and beside the story line and setting, the ups and downs and emotions and ins and outs and beside the two characters who are fabulous is the consequence. 48 hours that ended the cold war. >> let's get to reykjavik in a second and i would love to allow people to hear the stories you have from that weekend. but this is a memoir and journalistic summary of this and the end of the cold war. when you worked in the reagan whitehouse and were at the reykjavik summit in a primary role, did you believe or anticipate you would want to write a book? keep a diary? consult any notes from that time? >> guest: no, and it was stupid. it was the most important part

of my life and i chased down wonderful documents in reykjavik, at the reagan library and washington, d.c. and everywhere else. i found after the book went to press that i had in my files because we were moving, a letter that ronald reagan wrote me about reykjavik and saying the nice job i had done on that. and that is not in the book. so the most personal document of reykjavik, ronald reagan's letter to me a few days later, isn't recounted. so i saved nothing. i imagined many of your recollections you may have found discrepancy when you looked back at the details? >> guest: very few. i can go for years and not tell you anything i did the whole

here or decade. but when something like this happens, you remember remarkable number of things. and when you trace it, you know you can look at the photos, for example, i will tell you one example, okay? the summit was a surprise. everything about reykjavik is a surprise. so the kgb and the cia and the secret service knew about the summit before the state department knew. all right? so they go in to reykjavik and rent all of the rooms in the house. then the secret service goes to the us ambassador in reykjavik, it isn't an overworked capacity because nothing happens there, but he enjoyed deep sea fishing so it was the perfect appointment for the investor. he was told the president is going to be in your house on october 9th, 10th, 11th, and

12th. the ambassador was excited but he had the bad news is you are not. the ambassador by that time tried to find and room and couldn't find one in the city and he left. i remember thinking that was shabby treatment and the only thing in all of these hundreds of years that happened between iceland and the united states, the only thing that ever mattered, the u.s. ambassador is nowhere to be found. years later, i hear his wife said he was at reagan's side and doing all of this and then his widow. and i thought maybe my memory is wrong. then so for the research of this, i looked at reams of photographs of the whitehouse photographer in those little, whatever you call it, snapshots

and rolls of films that people for the whitehouse photographer. there were few taken inside the house but a lot at the ambassad ambassador's house. and he is appearing in none of the pictures. even when he had lunch with the president twice, at the ambassador's house, his own house, he is not there. so i am thinking to myself, i remember that was right. and he wasn't there. he was a widow and i am glad she thought he was but he wasn't. >> host: let's segue into the the start of the summit. this is the second face to face meeting. what transspired between the first meeting in geneva and the start of the reykjavik summit? what were the expectations of the american side going into the into this second meeting?

>> the expectations were low that gorbachev -- his arms control was stuck. reagan was thought to be out of control, hardliner that had, you know put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation at that time. you know, that things were not panning out. his main priority was the negotiate with the soviets and bring peace. it is remarkable. one of the remarkable parts of research i did was on the plane to detroit in 1980 to accept the republican nomination, stewart spencer, said ron, why are you doing this? why do you want to be president? and reagan says to end the cold war. who in 1980 thought anybody was going to end the cold war? as it happened he had a way to

do that. he had an outcome. he said we win, and they lose. and his approach of reducing nuclear weapons, having star wars, the sdi, expanding military might and delegitmizing the empire that it was going to end up in the ashes of history. all of these were a deliberate six year attack before reykjavik on that. so he had a strategy. i don't know if he hefsh thought about it because you don't know with ronald reagan what he thought about. but you know what he did. it was thought to be a summit reykjavik that wasn't going to be a summit. in fact the remarks on the south lawn when the president is going says this isn't a summit. this is a meeting to prepare a summit. it came together quickly.

we had spent six months preparing going back and forth. this was 12 days. >> and yet, henluge amount of attention descends on this tiny place. you have 3,000 journalist. and the three anchors from all networks show up. the a-teams of verify networks. and you were there as arm control director. tell me about your responsibilities going into the this weekend as you understood it? >> guest: as we understood our role was nothing because there wasn't going to be any substance happening. this was going to be a grim and

grab. someone was going to be at a media event and thought to be that gorbachev need today elevate his stature within the soviet union and how better than to meet with the president of the united states in the middle of nowhere and offer a meeting on that. that is what we expected and what the cia told us and what the american ambassador in moscow found out and the soviet ambassador in washington told us. we were going along with the photo- photo- photo-op summit on that. the first morning when reagan and gorbachev met, we were sitting in a bubble which is a room within a room. it is totally secure and it has big latches on the outside so that it can't be bugged. all right? and bubbles are generally pretty big. when we had the ones for the

armed control talks we could have 25 people in the bubble. in reykjavik they had the smallest bubble because nothing happened and nothing was classified. eight of us side by side, right next to each other on folding gray chairs, the kind that walmart would be ashamed to sell and they were keep as could be, and almost knee to knee and side by side and shultz is saying what he knew about the first meeting. then the latch opens up, door swings open, we look up and there is one of these 7-8 inch secret service agents who says the president of the united states. we did what any american would do. we stood up, reagan looks at all of us and said this would make a

great aquarium and then we come to a crisis because we had an eight-seater there and there were nine of us now. there was a chief of staff of the whitehouse. there was the second of state. the national security advisor and then there is the arms control director. so i knew if i was going to stay and i knew i was, i need today do something fast. so i offered the president my chair and said sit right here. and i hit the ground. and i was on the floor. and meanwhile this gigantic secret service locked the door again and we were in there. reagan cracked a few jokes and and said gorbachev is serious about doing things. and he said in what way? and he tried to tell us on approach that gorbachev was

taking. and we sat there for about 30 minutes and i was gently leaning against the presidential knees and we knew that our assessment was wrong. the intelligence was wrong, the reports were wrong and this is going to be a real thing. >> host: reagan and gorbachev don't know each other that well. they had the meetings in geneva but not a lot of heart to heart times. reagan is gleaming this from a relatively brief meeting with gorbachev that morning. >> >> guest: it was very well scripted and protocol minded and nothing comes out in an ideal state department summit and this was just the opposite. nothing was scripted.

nothing was ready. it was come as you are. and there was no protocol and i never shared a meal, a drink, and never shared a social event where geneva was all social events. it was like they were double-dating around the city. and neither were that busy outside of the main talks. but it never occurred why don't we invite gorbachev over to lunch. >> host: back to the bubble, what is reagan like in a setting like that? in command of the issues? engaged in what you were talking about? >> guest: he told us gorbachev was serious and wanted to lower the nuclear weapons and wasn't flexible on sdi. all of that was good and right.

and tried to tell us what kind of proposals gorbachev came up with and they were mix match. and shultz was in there trying to figure it out and he wasn't any better. because the whole lingo of arms control was awfully specialized and it was complicated and very few people knew it and very fewer needed to know it. and so they got all screwed up. but reagan then said oh my god he gave me a piece of paper. and we brought out the paper and reagan thought that was a very kind thing for gorbachev to do. we thought that gorbachev knew his man and we wasn't going to take away the numbers so he dove for the paper and thanks for press and talked about what it meant and stuff.

>> host: you dole with the details of what was discussed in terms of how many nuclear weapons each side cut and to what size but the bone of contention in reykjavik as many remember is sdi, strategic defense, star wars as it was known then, just describe again, what was sdi, why was it so important to reagan why did gorbachev oppose it? >> guest: it was important to reagan because it got us out of the kind of nuclear impass we have been in since the 1940's and 1950's. as reagan thought about two gunmans with a gun to each other's head. and it was mutual. not annihilation and he wanted

to get away from that. it was very value based. gorbachev thought the united states can do anything. that sdi is going to be real. it is going to negate our balli ballisttic missiles and soviet power and if we try to compete it is going to ruin the soviet union. reagan had a mystical view of what sdi could become. and gorbachev has a fright full vi view. these two guys elevated the plan and i think that gorbachev's view of it -- that it was going to bring down the soviet union, brought down the soviet union. gue >> host: did reagan see it as

such? what did reagan really intend to achieve with this per suit of sdi? to protect the united states with missiles. and it becomes more. you learn the details and you get a sense of knowing back and forth between the two leaders. the chapters 3, 4, and 5 give the back and perforth of what te two men are discussing. you see them wrong and by themselves and their real views. >> guest: how many people are in the room with them?

>> host: two of them. two note takers thank god who write down what they say. one russian and one american. and they by and large agree on most things and they are two translators. so that is all. during this time, those of us what in the room get a general idea of what happened. it is 25 years later when i am going through the notes i say holy cow it is amazing what these notes so. that reagan just as knowledgeable as gorbachev which everybody thought was impossible. gorbachev was the hot kid in town. he was whiz kid. he was a generation younger than reagan. so much smarter. so much younger and with it. reagan didn't know issues well. see just spoke from cards.

-- he -- and he was dottering around. you don't get that from the notes at all. you get the idea there is no gap 22 between the two but in terms of negotiations there is a big gap. and one of the wonderful parts of looking at the notes is over the ten and a half years gorbachev says to reagan i think 11-12 times i am making all of the concessions you have given me nothing. you know what reagan says? each of those times that gorbachev complains? he said nothing. he says absolutely nothing. and he must be sitting there thinking what is wrong with that. i knew i was a great negotiator. he never answers gorbachev and

gorbachev gets madder and madder. and we have, thank god, the notes of gorbachev on the plane from reykjavik back to moscow. and he has his staff on the plane and he says i gave away things in reykjavik. i made the concessions and reagan gave me nothing. his staff must have thought who is the dummy here. why did you do hat? that is the way it was. i was real lucky to be there. and too the memory of what happened there. and b to have the notes open. >> host: i want to talk about the climax of the summit in a second. but the details in the book are wonderful. your own experiences in reykjavik. one image that you point beautifully is the sight of the two military officers from each

side holding the nuclear football with the suit case and codes that will lunch a strike. you said the most memorable sight you recall from that summit. why is that? >> guest: the idea these two men were as close as you and i together and holding each of them in their pressed uniforms standing there and never looking at each other that i saw, holding a brief case and clutching it hard with their hand that had the codes to blow up each other's country. i thought god that is what they are talking about in this room. and hofty house is small. it is a small little house. and they didn't have room to spread out. we were up stairs in a parlor. there is a russian parlor and a military parlor and a zone tone

them. and then the conference room on the first floor and the two guys in the hallway. and every time a leader left a fellow holding a football left. but to go and see the leaders go into the room as i did and see their guys standing outside and not looking at each other and there wasn't much to look at, holding the football and gave me the willies. i looked at them then and several times over the weekend thinking that is what this is all about. >> now the dmz, the up stairs parlor that you write about as well, what was happening up there? you and basically the two negotiating team from both sides and it sign-up there and you don't know what is discussed down below. but you said it is a con genial atmosphere. >> guest: on the second day of

the summit, october 12th, 1986, they were gathering in the hallway of the top leadership of the soviet union and the united states. we went all night ending at 6:20 in the morning. i walked back, showered and reported back in the bubble we accomplished more in that one night than in seven years of constant negotiations in geneva. and then while the two were meeting that sunday morning all of a sudden from both parlors the diplomats came out and we had the most extraordinary conversations. it was like real people for the first time.

if you ask me about the chairman of the joint chiefs and you know that and i asked him about his prior service and he told funny stories about washington and you know, it was like normal people. and we had never had -- i had never had conversations with the soviet leaders like they were normal people. we were not searching for each other. tell me a secret. we were not trying to find anything about it. and it was amazing. it was amazing. >> host: and i suppose that is part of the unscripted nature of this summit. >> guest: everything was unscripted. you would not believe that a meeting -- i mean two ceo's in the united states, okay? they will not meet together without some agenda and who is going to attend on both sides?

that is standard for me, you know. no agenda, no who was going to participate or time set for anything. >> host: and the only limit, toward the end of the summit, and this maybe possible or not, but the president said he needed to get home sunday night. the first lady didn't come to reykjavik so he said he promised he would be home for dinner. >> guest: he mentioned it several times and it is distinct in my mind because it unusual. rise was there and she had the stage to herself. she changed her outfit four times the first day of the summit which i thought was robust. they were staying on board a ship and they called for the soviet sinatra.

a singer whose signature song was the impossible dream. who could make this stuff up? she used the plank getting off a boat like a fashion in a runway showing the new wears and reagan didn't know she was going to be there and stayed back in washington and fumed the whole weekend because she was prancing on the world stage. and the summit had a lockout on all news so there was a no leaks/briefings at all. so she had the strange to herself and used it like mad. that was a lot of fun. just gave a nice part to make a festive event. >> so the last session in reykjavik, there is no deal, the two sides are at logger heads

still over sdi and then gorbachev makes this sort of surprising statement -- what did gorbachev put on the table and how did president reagan respond? >> they had both agreed, saturday night the soviets finally agreeed to equal limits of strategic arms. a big breakthrough that make the summit one of the most important ones boy itself. the intermediate missiles from europe were eliminated. so we had breakthroughs on the nuclear front like we had never had before. on sunday, he says we did all of that, but you have to give up

sdi and he didn't say give it up but confine the research to the laboratories and a phrase he never used in the preparation meetings on the way there. but it popped in his head and he stuck with that. reagan said i am not going to give it up or confine to a libra library. no one would drive in a car that was confine today a laboratory. just understand what you are doing. >> host: it would be killing it? >> guest: and when i got back to washington, 80% of the text scheduled would have to be scratched and the congress wouldn't fund a program killed

in a crib. reagan says no and gorbachev says you have to. and they went back and forth and both wanted to get n agreement and both wanted the summit to be a success but there was a part they would not agree on. they left each other and reagan was furious. he was just fuming. and according to one of two possible explanations right at the end when gorbachev says i don't know what we could have different and reagan jabs his finger into his chest and said you could have said yes and goes into the limmo. we saw reagan's five minutes later at the ambassador's house and his aid, 20 years later, gave an oral history in which he said he never saw the president madder or more depresses except

when nancy reagan was going in for a cancer operation. no one talked to him teat the house. he was furious out of reykjavik and to the airbase and there he was going to spend five minutes talking to the troops, 3,000 troops that were stationed for a nato deployment and then schedule that for a long time. he was furious till he got to the base and stood in front of the 3,000 troops and he lit up and you can so from the speech he was back being ronald reagan. >> host: the way it is portrayed in the aftermath was that reagan walked away from the deal of the century. gorbachev had effectively proposed scrapping all nuclear

weapons and reagan said no. but you agree with him turning the deal down and still do i take it. >> guest: i did. i thought he was right we would go back to the nuclear side and keep our options open. but it wasn't -- i thought sdi was going to be important to reinforce deterants. reagan didn't want anything to do with that. he wanted to protect the united states. i had no idea and i say that in the book this is going to start a change reaction that was going to end the cold war. no one would have imagined that. gorbachev is back and he says two things: number one sdi, this guy is convinced --

gorbachev's strategy was i am going to make reagan a deal he cannot refuse. he behind out there is no deal on such that he cannot refuse. he hears reagan they there has been great progress on sdi. so he goes back and says i cannot make a deal with to kill sdi with reagan. i have to compete in the high tech area. within weeks he calls the meeting of the supreme soviet and tells him it has to be far more expensive and rapid reforms. reforms are poorly thought out and rushed into print. they probably wouldn't have succe succeeded anyway but gorbachev left no doubt about if they would succeed because he did it in the worst way possible. he wanted to reform it and that

is how he did it. from those reforms, the soviet union blew up. >> host: so we can talk about the implications of reykjavik and how it contributes to the end of the cold war which is the second half of your book is all about that. i didn't want to just ask you to talk about your first assignment when you get back from reykjavik to washington is probably not one you expected to take. but it is a great an dote in the book. what did you have to do when you got back to washington? >> it was a series of mishaps. thursday night we got to reykjavik and you know, i didn't sleep that well. friday night we were busy doing stuff. saturday an all-nighter. and i don't know about you but i never did an all-nighter in college.

and sunday i am exhausted getting six hours in the last three days and fit to be tight. and then don regan asked me to fly the press plane back and i said i am briefing the press on that. i get home at 2 in the morning on monday of october 23, 1986 and found out the freezer broke down and the car doesn't work. we take the wagon and take the meat that is melting and he is going to loan me a car to do the today show and i did that and i get back and all i want to do is chose the curtains. got the furl girls off to school and then i get calls from bill crow, chairman of the joint

chiefs, what happened? from don rumsfeld and dick cheney and i am trying to answer the calls and you only had one line during those days. i get a call from the whitehouse. i call the number. it is don regan chief of staff from the whitehouse. and he said ken, i need a favor from you and i thought this is going to be bad because he would go through staff aids and he said the president needs a favor and i said it is worse. and he said the president just hung up from talking to australia's prime minister hawk and promised that you would be there to brief him. so i say i cannot go i am absolutely going to be catatonic. i am on death row right now.

you know, i have gotten five hours of sleep in the last 3-4 nights and australia is the end of the world. and he said i know, that is great. and everything else but the president just mentioned you to hawk and a car is coming to take you to dulles for the 4 o'clock flight. so i go out there for a day and flew right back. >> host: and you said the hawk wanted to tell stories about reagan? >> guest: he wanted to tell me stories and show me his sail boat. so we agreeed to that. and then the press was going hysterical at the time. i told stories about reagan and he showed me a sail boat and it

was over a half hour of pictures he had of the sail boat. we went out and told the press he only budgeted an hour for this meeting but because of the importance of reykjavik we spent an hour and 40 minutes which time we spent ten on reykjavik. and lots on other things. but it showed he was a good ally and the united states cared about it. he did care because he was cooperative on the issue that liberal part of his party wanted arms control. as the director of arms control, i could satisfy that. >> host: before we get back to reagan and gorbachev, i wanted to ask you about a character that is played throughout the book. someone you have mentioned

sergio acramayo. tell me about this and his role at reykjavik and his story and why you decided to feature and have it as running secondary character throughout the narrative. >> guest: i thought it was tremendous what he did. he was a five-star marshal. our last five-star marshal was omar bradley. he was the most decorated man in soviet history. one of the few heroes of the soviet union. he appeared and all of us had heard about him and none met him. he controlled his delegation in a way that was magnificent. we were dealing with guys who were taking enormous amount of

time giving propaganda speeches. and he said i want to do business at 8:00 and another one about to offered and he started haranguing. he put his hand on the guy's arm, looked at him with a five-star stare, guy simmered down, he went back and said as we were saying. totally ignored that. and 2-3 times when they would fire up their ploy he would stare them down and say we are not doing that. and he made the greatest concession on the arms to what i consider a reasonable point of view. so that was from 8:00 at night until 8:20 the next morning. talked to him some and never saw

him again. okay. then he appears in geneva the next year in 1987. we negotiated all day and they us out for dinner and i am with collin powell and george shultz and we are talking about arms control and he had arm controls coming out of our ears by that time. so i decided to break the mold and i said i read, meaning the cia reports, but i didn't say that, i read you are the last soviet in uniform who fought in world war ii and you had an amazing time. he just lit up. he joined when he was 17. starting when he was 18, his tank bitalion was stationed

outside a german town and they were being attacked on the road. he was not in the building for 18 months during the russian winter. 20 degrees below zero. he had a pop up tent. but never in the building for 18 months. on that road to keep the german division from taking it. a few million people were dying there. he told us the story and we were all blown away. collin powell asked questions on the tanks and it was nice to see the two soldiers talk about their lingo and events. and like every good thing in life you say this has been about 40 minutes. we have to go. and shultz says that was

wonderful and thank you for sharing that. that kind of determination and grit is what americans admire in soviet people. it was a wonderful moment. he looks at him and says thank you, mr. secretary, i appreciate that. but the truth is that had we moved from that road, stallin would have had a shot. -- stalin -- i think isn't that a great remark. he is complimenting him but telling him what the reality was. stalin would have had him shot. and stalin said there were no people that surrendered they are just traders. so anybody in the pow camp was killed after the war. and then i saw him at the signing ceremony in 1987 and he

said it was the proudest moment of his life, well one of the two. he and the chairman of the joint chief of staff went around the united states to visit military basis and that was unheard of before reykjavik. and while the wall was falling, just in time in 1989, which is a year and a half later, i was out of government but i was in a conference in moscow with robert and a bunch of people and gorbachev's military advisor was there, i sent a note i would love to see you. he came over and we had a wonderful hour talking. he showed me his office and it

was a chand leer and his phone bank was difference colors and shapes and sizes and attraattra more attention. we said good boy by and i thanked him for the his cooperation and being the hero of reykjavik. and then the wall starts to fall. and i am reading the paper and it says acromayo committed suicide. in his office. with the chandlar. took the ropes from the drapes and with the chand leer committed suicide. and as if that wasn't bad enough, something happened a week later. when i read that paper on

september 26th it was early in the morning. by that time, collin powell was chairman of the joint chiefs. i called him up and it was before 7 a.m. in the morning. his secretary said well he is in a briefing already and i said tell him tom called and whenever he gets the chance to call. he said hold on a moment. and so, hold on a minute. phone rings and he and my mother call me kenny. i felt the same thing. it was unbelievable. a week later, acromayo's funeral takes place and no official attends. no body from the foreign min stre, no military honors, just his daughter, wife and a few friends.

vandals came and stole the body away. i was devastated because i said there is an honorable man in a dishonorable cause but someone i admire and we shared special moments and he 2-3 suicide notes. one is published and in the book. another to his wife that was personal and according to what i just heard a third one that gorbachev is going to release after this death, i asked his assistant who i had breakfast with two weeks ago, why don't we release that?

and he said i will ask him when i get back to moscow. that story line is the most emotional and intriguing part of the reykjavik story. >> host: with the last few minutes we have, i wanted you to reflect on this extraordinary relationship we know reagan and gorbachev. there are so many photos from the last few years of the cold war and you can see in the photographs there was a chemistry between these two men. what was it? how do you explain it? and how much was forged in that weekend in reykjavik? >> guest: there wasn't a great deal of friendship between the two of them. there was a mutual admiration

and a mutual need for each other. reagan went through the contra episode which people thought was ridiculous. governor -- gorbachev -- was going through a problem and any time it turned domestic it was a nightmare. the only salvation was on the international stage and the only thing going on was each other. they needed that. they understood and respected each other. there was a wonderful story i ran into and put in the book when years later gorbachev was in london and attending a conference at oxford and some british academic, typical, snotty to tell you the truth, says everybody knows reagan is just a lightweight and didn't know anything about that. typical academic, typical

british, snotty remarks. gorbachev interrupts them and says professor that is wrong. reagan was a man of judgment, integrity and don't say that. i thought whoa. he didn't have to say anything. so there was this respect on that. there was a need for each other. and there was a common bond of views they both thought were too many nuclear weapons, and they were right, and way too dangerously deployed. and they a kinship with both were born and raised in the land. the chance of them coming to power was not conceivable. reagan's family was a drunk and sold shoes and gorbachev's

family was poor and the chance of them coming together as leaders of the world. and they realized that. when i think about the book and reykjavik and i think one thing i should have added in the book was maybe people are right, maybe the house was haunted and what happened there was so extraordinary and in a way so mysterious and so extra worldly that, you know, maybe they are right. maybe it is a haunted house. or a ghost house. >> it is an extroidinary story and thank you for your time. this was a lot of fun. >> you are welcome.

>> that was afterwards where authors are interviewed with people familiar with their material. you can watch afterwards online at booktv.org and click on the topics in the upper right hand of the page. ...

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