Toward A More Civil Society?: The USSR Under Mikhail Sergeievich Gorbachev; The New Détente: Rethinking East-West Relations

Both these volumes are positive and optimistic about "new thinking" and new policies in the U.S.S.R., and both urge the West not to miss the golden opportunities for détente and peace. The volume edited by Miller contains up-to-date analyses of the dynamics of change and reform in Soviet society, competently done by scholars who are now or have been associated with the American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations, and it concludes with brief reflections and recommendations by a number of prominent Americans including George Ball, William Colby, John Kenneth Galbraith, Olin Robison and others. The New Détente covers a wide range of East-West questions, past and present, with no lack of prescriptions for the future. The authors are from both East and West, many of them well out in front of official or conventional thinking in their own societies.