When the Soviets walked out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) talks in Geneva last week, Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, who wrote the behind-the-scenes history of the negotiations that accompanies this week's cover story, confessed to some pessimism about the course of events. Nevertheless, he is confident that arms control is an unfinished story. Says Talbott: "The interruption of these talks closed an episode, but there will probably be more chapters to come." Talbott has closely followed the labyrinthine plot twists of arms-control negotiations for ten years. He covered the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Talks from 1973 to 1979 and subsequently turned his observations into a 1979 book, Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II (Harper & Row; 319 pages; $15). His fascination with Soviet-American relations goes back to his teen-age years, when he studied Russian at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn. A student of Russian literature at Yale and then at Oxford, Talbott worked as a 1969 summer trainee at TIME's Moscow bureau, and has since returned to the Soviet Union more than a dozen times on reporting assignments. In 1970 and 1974 he translated and edited the two volumes of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs. His interest in Soviet affairs led naturally to a concern about arms control. Says Talbott: "At the most basic level, avoiding nuclear war is what Soviet-American relations are all about."

The presidency of Ronald Reagan, marked by its harsh criticism of SALT II, signaled a new era in superpower diplomacy and heightened Talbott's interest in arms control. During the past three years, he has gathered information week by week, talking with officials at various levels in numerous agencies of the U.S. Government. He traveled to Moscow, Geneva, London and Bonn, interviewing North Atlantic Treaty Organization spokesmen as well as experts from the Soviet Union. The result is a vivid look at what really happened as the representatives of the superpowers wrestled to find agreement at Geneva. This week's story will be expanded by Talbott into his second arms-control book, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf next year. Sums up Talbott: "Arms control can be a very complex, esoteric subject. I have tried to bring a human dimension to it by describing the forceful personalities who shape policy on both sides of the negotiating table." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.