INTO THE DARKNESS

N SEPTEMBER 1984 I WAS A WIDE-EYED American student on my first trip to Europe, there to pursue my master’s degree at King’s College London. The Cold War was then at a renewed height, and many Europeans pointed fingers of blame at President Ronald Reagan, whose firm military stance against the Soviets and rhetoric of their “evil empire” seemed inadvertently—or perhaps intentionally—liable to provoke a full-scale conflict between NATO nations and Soviet-backed Warsaw Pact countries.