Playing God: Seven Fateful Moments When Great Men Met to Change the World

Mee, who has written books about Meeting at Potsdam and The End of Order: Versailles 1919 , clearly has a taste for those moments in history when world leaders grab at the brass ring of history. Here he selects seven such pivotal encounters and constructs lively scenarios rich in data. In insightful extended essays, he analyzes Attila the Hun's confrontation with Pope Leo in 452; Cortes and Moctezuma at Tenochtitlan in 1519; the meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520; the Congress of Vienna in 1815; the Paris Peace Conference in 1919; Yalta, 1945; and the G7 summit in London in 1991. Mee shows these meetings of ``great'' men to be as much about human complexities as diplomatic, a mix of hubris and compromise, blunders and wily statecraft, good intentions and broken trust. Photos not seen by PW . (Sept.)