About Sam Tanenhaus: Sam Tanenhaus is an American historian, biographer, and journalist. He is a writer-at-large for The New York Times.
Our nemesis is time, against which we have a single ally, memory, and even it betrays us.
That image of a chessboard — an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy — has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions rem...
