This book covers the ten-month period from July 1959 to May 1960 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower aggressively sought to “thaw” the tensions of the Cold War before he left office in January 1961. The story begins with Eisenhower’s surprising announcement in early August 1959 that he and Nikita S. Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union, had agreed to exchange visits to each other’s countries as a first step in reducing some of the ill will that then existed between the United States and the Soviet Union. The story ends with the U-2 crisis of May 1960, when the Soviet Union shot down an American reconnaissance aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers. The chain of events that followed the capture of Powers by the Soviets led to the collapse of the long-anticipated Four Power summit conference in Paris in May and Khrushchev’s withdrawal of his invitation to Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union in June.