Contrary to the title of this book, the author is not primarily concerned with events that took place in 1989. Ironically, her story takes off when the protagonists realize, in early 1990, that the political solutions discussed only a few months earlier would not work for managing what turned out to be a political experiment without precedent: the reconfiguration of the international order in Europe, following a series of peaceful revolutions that brushed aside Socialist one-party regimes in central and eastern Europe. Nor does the author aim at retelling the story of the “dissolution” (Charles S. Maier) of the German Democratic Republic and its allies, culminating in 1989. Instead, Mary Elise Sarotte looks at the results of the Cold War's end in Germany and investigates how they came about. She blends domestic developments into the analysis of how state actors conducted—and consolidated—international relations in Europe over the course of the year 1990. She asks, too, whether the ultimate solution, that is, to rely on pre-1989 western political models, was adequate to cope with international challenges that followed.

Germany takes center stage in Sarotte's narrative, with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl—assisted by his foreign policy advisor Horst Teltschik—towering above his domestic competitors and even overshadowing the leaders of the two superpowers, George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. Her book might thus serve as a case study for those, in the vein of Thomas Risse-Kappen and others, who are interested in investigating when, how, and why regional powers and smaller alliance partners may influence the politics of hegemonic powers. As much as Sarotte zooms in on Kohl's mastery in influencing—and politically manipulating—friends and foes, however, her account is anything but hagiographic. She demonstrates convincingly that Kohl's ultimately successful approach of “perpetuating structures fabricated for a divided world into an undivided one” (p. 8) was neither a master plan carried out from the beginning, and as such inevitable, nor without major flaws. Sarotte delineates the different models for redefining Europe's international order that were floating around in the minds of power brokers at the end of 1989: Kohl's initial model of a German-German confederation was soon abandoned, Soviet ideas of restoring the four-power (post-World War II) regime on German territory met staunch opposition in the U.S. and West Germany, and Gorbachev's ideas of a new pan-European order was never given serious consideration in the west.

Sarotte's account exploits the unusually broad pool of available diplomatic sources and is interspersed with telling quotes, at times even a dose of irony. In a dense narration, she takes the reader through the fascinating story of how Kohl—supported, not led by George Bush—modified earlier ideas. That is how he overrode his minister for foreign affairs, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and steered Gorbachev with the help of huge financial promises toward accepting the “rush to German unity” (Konrad Jarausch) and especially full membership in NATO of unified Germany. More so than other comparable studies, Sarotte puts the NATO issue into the foreground. While this treatment of the story's major turns and most of the details are hardly novel, the passages dealing with the actual turn of events between February and July 1990 are skillfully composed and reflect the drama of the moment. They weave together beautifully the story's threads in a coherent story, highlighting some international dimensions that tend to be overlooked today. Thus, Sarotte pays special attention to Kohl being concerned about the potential for unrest among the remaining Soviet troops in East Germany (and cleverly using this concern as leverage vis-à-vis Gorbachev). She discusses the enormous problem inherent in the option of following West German Basic Law's article 146—instead of article 23, as it happened—as the legal path to create a unified Germany; in fact, that would have meant renegotiating numerous international treaties. And she stresses how Margaret Thatcher maneuvered Great Britain into the position of a bystander through her intransigence and early opposition to German unification.

Quite a bit of background knowledge is helpful when reading this book; it is hard to imagine that today's students are familiar, for example, with the names and historical role of Bärbel Bohley and Valentin Falin. All readers might ask themselves, however, what is more surprising in retrospect: the fact that “little was under superpower control” (p. 209) in Europe in 1989-90; that Gorbachev was not more persistent in resisting NATO expansion and demanding even more from Kohl, thus leaving the Soviet Union and later Russia with a “sense of victimization” (p. 209) and a huge strategic liability; or that “the people who brought the previous order to an end enjoyed no particular claim to run matters after the dust settled” (p. 202). By giving due respect to the lasting challenges Russia has faced since 1990, emphasizing the disinterest on the part of the Bush administration in developing a new vision for Europe after the Cold War's end, and identifying the weaknesses inherent in Kohl approach to achieving German unity, this book truly underscores the necessity of entering a post-triumphalist phase in writing the history of what came after the Wall came down. This book provides a wonderful example of how an enlightened diplomatic history can contribute to this endeavor.