The Divine Plan

John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War

By: Paul Kengor PhD, Robert Orlando

Narrated by: Donald Corren

Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's Summary

Just six weeks apart in the spring of 1981, Pope John Paul II and President ­Ronald Reagan took bullets from would-be assassins.

Few realized at the time how close both men came to dying. 

Surviving these near-death experiences created a singular bond between the pope and the president that ­historians have failed to appreciate. 

When John Paul II and Reagan met only a year later, they confided to each other a shared conviction: that God had spared their lives for a ­reason. That reason? To defeat Communism. In private, Reagan had a name for this: “The DP” - the Divine Plan.

It has become fashionable to see the collapse of the Soviet empire as inevitable. Hardly.

In this riveting book, bestselling author Paul Kengor and writer-­director Robert Orlando show what it took to end the Cold War: leaders who refused to accept that hundreds of ­millions must suffer under totalitarian ­Communism.

And no leaders proved more important than the pope and the president.

Two men who seemed to have little in common developed an extraordinary bond - including a spiritual bond between the Catholic pope and Protestant president. And their shared core convictions drove them to confront Communism.

To tell the full story of the dramatic closing act of the Cold War, Kengor and Orlando draw on their exhaustive research and exclusive interviews with more than a dozen experts, including well-known historians Douglas Brinkley; H. W. Brands; Anne Applebaum; Stephen Kotkin; John O’Sullivan; Craig Shirley, the leading biographer of John Paul II; George Weigel; close Reagan advisers Richard V. 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 came to such a swift and peaceful end - without understanding how much faith they put in the Divine Plan.

©2019 Paul Kengor, PhD and Robert Orlando (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing

Provenance of God in world events

The author gives the reader a rather convincing dissertation on how God used the lives of Reagan, John Paul 2 & Gorbechev to change the path of human history with the fall of communism. A straight forward presentation utilizing not just evidence by the way of the written record but the testimony of those that knew them best. The narrator gives the sometimes dry wording a touch of dramatic flair, tirninh it into a story tale rather than a basic history book

Powerful History and a Warning

Anyone who thinks Ronald Reagan was an intellectual light-weight or warmongering hawk should read this book. Those who view Pope John Paul as an authoritarian misogynist should read this book. We in the United States must look at the social collapse in Venezuela, and take heed at the rising fervor for socialism. This and “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers are MUST READS!!

Friendship of key Leaders

I really enjoyed this book because it brought the bridge and friendship of the most important leaders since the WWII. The book does not bring many new facts, but establishes the foundations of how these two great men bounded and defeated Communism. I’m glad that I read this book of my favorite president and my favorite person and saint.