Magisterial review of William Taubman’s equally magnificent biography, Gorbachev: His Life and Times. “Not many people change the world. Fewer still are thanked for it. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev changed the world, as so many adoring millions saw it at the time, by ending the threat of their extermination by nuclear war and by allowing Europe’s ‘captive nations’ to liberate themselves. But then, a Samson already blinded by his enemies, he brought down the gigantic temple of the Soviet Union on his own head, and his own power perished with it”
