The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War

In the Spring of 1981, Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan each took gunfire from would-be assassins. Few recognized how near both men came to death at the time. Surviving these near-death encounters forged a unique bond between the pope and the president that historians have overlooked.

When John Paul II and Ronald Reagan met a year later, they shared a common belief: that God had spared their lives for a reason. What is the reason? To bring down Communism. In private, Reagan referred to this as "The DP"—the Divine Plan.

In this engrossing book, bestselling novelist Paul Kengor and writer-film director Robert Orlando show what it took to bring the Cold War to an end: leaders who refused to accept that hundreds of millions of people had to endure under totalitarian communism. And no leaders were more influential than the Pope and the President.

Two individuals who appeared to have nothing in common formed an incredible friendship, including a spiritual bond between the Catholic Pope and the Protestant President. And it was their common underlying beliefs that prompted them to challenge Communism.

Kengor and Orlando rely on extensive research and exclusive interviews with numerous experts to tell the full storey of the Cold War's dramatic final act, including well-known historians Douglas Brinkley, H. W. Brands, Anne Applebaum, Stephen Kotkin, John O'Sullivan, and Craig Shirley; George Weigel, the leading biographer of John Paul II; close Reagan advisers Richard Allen and James Rosebush; and Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron.

You can't understand Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan, or how the Cold War ended so quickly and peacefully, until you realize how much faith they placed in the "Divine Plan."