The Cold War was a complex, high-stakes period in world history during which the slightest mistake by JFK or Khrushchev?or their underlings?had the potential to devastate millions of lives. A scary time, it was also a time of heroes, cowards, soldiers, and thieves. Cold War Crossroads follows the paths of four such individuals with their own stories and agendas. Over a three year period, the observant narrator details the respective Cold War experiences, from 1961 to 1989, of an American soldier, an American government employee, an East German dissident engineer, and an East German worker. Tensions are common in all sectors, underneath and over the Berlin Wall. Author W. D. Owen is no stranger to this time of upheaval. He spent four years of his youth in West Germany during the Cold War. An accomplished German linguist and scholar of German defense policy, domestic politics, and culture, Owen lived in or visited both East and West German sites over a span of fifty years.