Word: tensions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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RAISA GORBACHEV'S apparent nervous breakdown did not surprise top Soviet analysts. The normally vigorous First Lady was showing signs of tension when she accompanied her husband to the London economic summit in July. Drawing aside Barbara Bush, Raisa confided her worries about Mikhail's political future, even hinting that she feared for his life. Soviet officials in Europe report that she became hysterical several times during her Crimean captivity, and speculate that she has suffered a stroke and a heart attack...
After the Bay of Pigs, and with tension rising in Berlin, John Kennedy went to Vienna believing that he could find some agreement with Nikita Khrushchev on how to reduce the threat of nuclear war. Instead he drew blank stares and threats. Throughout that grim summer Kennedy would talk to friends about Khrushchev's seeming indifference to the specter of millions of people dying in a nuclear exchange. "I'd never encountered anybody like that before," Kennedy mused...
...Tension nonetheless built toward a climax Tuesday night. It was obvious that the junta could no longer prevail unless it began using deadly force, starting with an armed assault on Yeltsin's White House. All afternoon and evening, loudspeakers blared warnings that tanks were rolling toward the building and 60 planes filled with paratroopers were preparing for an airborne assault. Thousands of people worked through the night building barricades to deter an attack, supplemented by human chains of unarmed protesters. At the foot of the main staircase, an organizer with a megaphone called, "All courageous men who are willing...
Last week's Moscow summit had been billed as the final act of the cold war. But within hours after Air Force One touched down at Sheremetyevo Airport, it was clear that the last vestiges of East-West tension had dissolved long before George Bush's arrival. In what both sides agreed was the friendliest U.S.-Soviet summit ever, Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev laughed and joked their way through the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which will reduce the two superpowers' nuclear arsenals, and a series of other agreements covering everything from agriculture to the arts. Bush...
Elmore Leonard controls more assets than a Mafia don. He possesses a gift for lowlife dialogue, a thorough knowledge of underworld mores and a mastery of high-tension narrative. What he does not have is a gift for whimsy, and that, alas, is the chief ingredient of Maximum Bob (Delacorte; 295 pages; $20). The title character is a sleazoid Florida judge who likes to hit on lady cops and hand out heavy sentences. Someone tries to ice Maximum Bob with a unique weapon: a hungry alligator. There is a long enemies list, including Leanne, the judge's loony wife; Dale...