Living in West Berlin in the 1960s could feel like being in a zoo, with everyone packed together and the world always watching, while on the other side of the Wall, East Berlin seemed spacious and lush—a socialist utopia where everything was perfectly planned, if rarely completed. Perhaps that's why the divided city's two zoos came to symbolize the Iron Curtain itself, leading to the strangest proxy conflict of the era. Zookeepers on either side began an "animal arms race" to prove the superiority of their respective societies, diverting state funds to give incoming pandas and hippos welcomes worthy of diplomats. German journalist Jan Mohnhaupt gives us a lively, almost comical tale of a bizarre episode in Cold War history.