On the rainy Sunday evening of February 26, 2012, the lives of two individuals collided at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated townhouse community in the Orlando suburb known as Sanford, Florida. George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old insurance underwriter and neighborhood watch volunteer, grew suspicious of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old high schooler who was temporarily staying at the home of his father's fiancee who lived in the small gated subdivision. Martin, unarmed and dressed in a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt, was walking home after going to a nearby 7-11 store to buy a can of Arizona Iced Tea and a bag of Skittles. Martin had committed no crime, but Zimmerman, concerned about recent burglaries and thefts in the neighborhood, called police to report "a real suspicious guy" who Zimmerman said was "up to no good . . . or [was] on drugs or something." Minutes later, Trayvon Martin lay dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest. After Sanford police and prosecutors, unable to refute Zimmerman's claim of self defense, declined to charge him with the killing, Florida's governor appointed a special prosecutor, Jacksonville State Attorney Angela Corey, to investigate the case in the wake of protests and racially-charged anger that spread from coast to coast. Bypassing a grand jury, Corey filed second-degree murder charges against the neighborhood watch volunteer in a case that had become arguably the most controversial event of the decade. Now, forensic expert and crime scene reconstructionist Michael A. Knox tells the story of the forensic evidence in the killing and explains what that evidence really says about the fateful events that February evening in Sanford, Florida. Can the prosecution truly prove beyond a reasonable doubt that George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin? Intermediate Range is a riveting account of the forensic evidence in the killing, much of which has been overlooked, misunderstood, or ignored by the public and the news media.

In Euromissiles, Susan Colbourn tells the story of the height of nuclear crisis and the remarkable waning of the fear that gripped the globe. In the Cold War conflict that pitted nuclear superpowers against one another, Europe was the principal battleground. Washington and Moscow had troops on the ground and missiles in the fields of their respective allies, the NATO nations and the states of the Warsaw Pact. Euromissiles—intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be used exclusively in the regional theater of war—highlighted how the peoples of Europe were dangerously placed between hammer and anvil. That made European leaders uncomfortable and pushed fearful masses into the streets demanding peace in their time. At the center of the story is NATO. Colbourn highlights the weakness of the alliance seen by many as the most effective bulwark against Soviet aggression. Divided among themselves and uncertain about the depth of US support, the member states were riven by the missile issue. This strategic crisis was, as much as any summit meeting between US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the hinge on which the Cold War turned. Euromissiles is a history of diplomacy and alliances, social movements and strategy, nuclear weapons and nagging fears, and politics. To tell that history, Colbourn takes a long view of the strategic crisis—from the emerging dilemmas of allied defense in the early 1950s through the aftermath of the INF Treaty thirty-five years later. The result is a dramatic and sweeping tale that changes the way we think about the Cold War and its culmination.

The official monthly record of United States foreign policy.