Hey, it's NPR's book of the day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Sometimes we like to grab an interview from the archives and show how,

you know, wow, given enough time, it sometimes looks like history moves at a snail's pace.

Today is not one of those times. Instead, it's kind of an example of the opposite, how if you go back not that long

ago, the world stage looked a lot different. David Sanger's book is titled New Cold Wars.

He covers President Biden for the New York Times, and his book is about, well, I'll just let

the subtitle spell it out, China's rise, Russia's invasion, and America's struggle to defend the West.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly spoke with him, and just to get a sense of how drastically different

the world was, she opens this interview with a scene from 2002, where then-president George W. Bush

and Russian President Vladimir Putin are chilling on a yacht together. I know already a weird sentence.

But then listen closely for the cameo appearance.

That's after the break.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods.

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The early pages of David Sanger's new book contain the following scene.

It's a perfect white night in St. Petersburg, Russia, May 2002, then U.S. President George W. Bush,

and then, as now, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and their wives are on a luxury yacht floating down the Neva River.

The dinner menu includes black caviar and foie gras, and it is elegantly served, as Sanger tells it,

by a brooding man in a dark suit. A man who Sanger learned years later was one Yvgeny Progousin,

who, of course, last year launched a rebellion, marched

...