When President Reagan was four, he loved looking out the window of his home on 832 East 57th Street in Hyde Park, not far from the University of Chicago, watching the horse-drawn fire engines storm down the street.

He later wrote in a 1988 letter, that watching the firemen “come down the street at full gallop … made me decide I wanted to be a fireman.” So he did — only the fires he put out were of a larger, geopolitical nature, such as winning the Cold War without firing a shot.