Synopses & Reviews
A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces the original best and brightest, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, the freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout the formative years of the Cold War; John McCloy, one of the nation's most influential private citizens; and Charles Bohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.
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The Boston Globe A wealth of new information and insights on the people and events that shaped the first four decades of the Cold War.
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San Francisco Chronicle Entertaining and lively....Isaacson and Thomas have fashioned a Cold War Plutarch.
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The New York Times Book Review A richly textured account of a class and of a historical period.
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Robert A. Caro author of Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Journalism at the heights! Scintillating....Must be read if we are to understand the postwar world.
About the Author
Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of
Time magazine. He is the author of
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and of
Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.
Jacket photograph by Albert Watson Evan Thomas is assistant managing editor of Newsweek. He has won a National Magazine Award and taught writing at Harvard and Princeton. He has written seven books, including New York Times bestselling John Paul Jones.