Dean Acheson

Rare meat: adding reach to power -- Patterns of peril: joining the cold warriors -- Rome and Carthage: the Truman Doctrine -- The Marshall Plan and return to private life -- The inner and outer Acheson -- Acheson, the President, and the State Department -- Keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down, 1949 -- Strategy in Europe: blacking the West, probing the East -- Looking for chances in China, 1949 -- Neither wood nor ivory: checkmated in China, 1949-1950 -- Other early encounters with Asia and the Middle East -- Weapons: the H-Bomb -- Words: NSC-68, public opinion, and total diplomacy -- Real diplomacy, in Europe, 1949-1950 -- Plunge into the unknown: the United States, Indochina, and China on the eve of the Korean War -- Friends in place: Acheson and Alger Hiss -- Evil days -- Testing ground, Korea -- In the cockpit -- Prodding evolution with action: German rearmament -- Acceleration from a running start -- In thrall: ironic failures in Korea -- Job's comforter and the mad satrap -- Captives of war -- At different ends of the triangle: domestic debates, European armies, British allies -- Command in Japan -- Failure in Indochina and China -- Razor edge sensibilities: ANZUS and India -- Falling between two stools: the Middle East, North Africa, and Africa -- Picking up sticks in Egypt and Iran -- Jousting with Mosadeq, waiting for Nasser -- Latin America: critical but not serious -- Lisbon to letdown: the fate of the EDC -- Apples of discord: Germany and the Soviety Union, 1952 -- Scope for the exercise of every vital power -- Conclusion: power for a purpose.