Strobe Talbott is a prominent American politician. He worked for Time magazine for twenty-one years, after which he entered government service as a special adviser to the US Secretary of State on issues of newly independent states in the post-Soviet space. S. Talbott later became US Deputy Secretary of State (1994 - 2001); since 2002, president of the Brookings Institution in Washington. Michael Beschloss is an American historian and political scientist, author of several books on Soviet-American relations and US foreign policy. In their book, S. Talbott and M. Beschloss talked about how the administration of President Bush stubbornly and purposefully prepared the collapse of the Soviet Union, without hesitation in using any means. The book contains secret messages and telephone conversations between Bush and Gorbachev, Baker and Shevardnadze, transcripts of closed meetings in the Kremlin, the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA and the KGB.