The Craig Buthod Author Series is pleased to welcome veteran U.S. Foreign Service officer Louis Sell to the Main Library for a discussion of his new book From Washington to Moscow, which tells the history of U.S.-Soviet relations between 1972 and 1991 and explains why the Cold War came to an abrupt end. Drawing heavily on archival sources and memoirs, as well as his own experiences, Sell vividly describes events from the perspectives of American and Soviet participants. He attributes the USSR's fall not to one specific cause, but to a combination of the Soviet system's inherent weaknesses, mistakes by Mikhail Gorbachev, and challenges by Ronald Reagan and other U.S. leaders. He shows how the U.S.S.R.'s rapid and humiliating collapse, and the inability of the West and Russia to find a way to cooperate respectfully, helped set the foundation for Vladimir Putin's rise to power.

A retired Foreign Service Officer, Louis Sell worked for six years at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and eight years in Yugoslavia. He served as U.S. representative to the Joint Consultative Group in Vienna, as Director of the Office of Russian and Eurasian Analysis, Director of the Office of U.S.-Soviet Bilateral Relations, and as Special Assistant and Executive Secretary of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks.

Mr. Sell is interviewed by Professor Charles Ziegler from the University of Louisville's Department of Political Science.