President of the Atlantic Foreign Policy Research Council of the United States, political journalist, Frederick Kemp dedicated his book to one of the most tense moments of the Cold War in Central Europe. The author used the testimony of participants in the Berlin crisis, collected and analyzed a huge amount of material from American, German and Soviet archives, and reconstructed to the smallest detail the events preceding the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. Studying the causes, development and resolution of the Berlin question, Kemp presented vivid portraits of the four main characters of the political drama: Khrushchev, Kennedy, Ulbricht and Adenauer. During 1961, all of them were united by Berlin - the center of their main aspirations and fears.

Translation: G. Maksimyuk