by James Mann, 2010, Penguin Books

This book was very disappointing, primarily because it was so repetitious.  There were over sixty pages devoted to objections by various individuals to Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech.  Many of the objections were repeated numerous times in the book.  Our book club selected the book for the month of May, but many participants said they didn’t bother to finish the book.

I was further disappointed when I read the acknowledgements at the end of the book.  The author interviewed numerous individuals who were involved in the events depicted in the book.  He also spent a number of months in Berlin studying.  The disappointment is that he brought so little from those interviews and studies to the book.

Did I say that there was a lot of repetition?  In case you missed that part, I have to mention that the author repeated a lot of information, much of it over and over and over again.