Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Fall of the Berlin Wall by William F Buckley Jr, 192 pages

This book could more accurately be titled "The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall".  Buckley briefly explains the nature of the post-war Allied settlement and the development of a - seemingly permanently - divided city.  The construction of the Wall itself and the crisis which followed (the only time, Buckley claims, that American and Soviet tanks actually had their guns trained on one another) is covered more thoroughly, followed by discussion of attempts to circumvent the barrier or to come to terms with it.  Finally, there is a broad overview of the events leading up to the moment when, anti-climatically, the East German government announced in a routine press conference that the Wall was irrelevant, and the epochal repercussions of that announcement.

There isn't any special insight here - it is neither a detailed history of the fall of the Wall (The Collapse) nor an insider's eyewitness account of the events of 1989 (The Magic Lantern), but there is a solid overview of the history of one of the world's most infamous structures.  Throughout, the author allows the mere fact of the Wall to speak eloquently of the nature of the regime that built it.  Buckley's talents as a storyteller make the tale readable and compelling.