One of a select group of American foreign service officers to receive specialized training on the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s, George Frost Kennan eventually became the American government's chief expert on Soviet affairs during the height of the Cold War.
Drawing upon a wealth of original research, David Mayers' fascinating life of George Kennan examines his high-level participation in foreign policy-making and interprets his political and philosophical development within a historical framework. Mayers presents an engaging and lucid account of Kennan's training; his rise to prominence during the late 1940s and his policy failures; and his later roles as critic of America's external policy, advocate of detente with the Soviet Union, and proponent of nuclear arms limitation. Mayers also explores Kennan's complicated relationships with such important political figures and analysts as Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, and Walter Lippmann.
Industry Reviews
"This book has great possibilities as a focused survey to accompany Paterson's Meeting the Communist Threat, carrying Kennan through his creative phase down through his years as a critic of U.S. foreign policy to his vindication when the Soviet Union collapsed. This book has the great advantage of personalizing the Cold War in a way that will enable students to grasp and retain its concepts much better than in an impersonal account!"--John R.M.
Wilson, Southern California College
"An articulate, well-researched, intellectual biography."--The International History Review
"A magisterial on George Frost Kennan's enormous influence....Eminently well suited for professionals in the area of foreign policymaking and diplomatic history, as well as for an audience of mature university students....The definitive work on the subject."--Perspective
"This well-written analysis of George Kennan's career as a scholar-diplomat shed new light on the complexities of a professional life whose broad outlines are known to general readers as well as specialists....[Kennan] has found a worthy intellectual biographer in David Mayers."--International Affairs
"A conscientious and scrupulously fair scholar, Mayers examines Kennan's works and career with a thoroughness never before attempted....[This] is a serious work that provides the best detailed account we have of Kennan as diplomat, analyst, and critic."--Ronald Steel, The New York Review of Books
"This book has great possibilities as a focused survey to accompany Paterson's Meeting the Communist Threat, carrying Kennan through his creative phase down through his years as a critic of U.S. foreign policy to his vindication when the Soviet Union collapsed. This book has the great advantage of personalizing the Cold War in a way that will enable students to grasp and retain its concepts much better than in an impersonal account!"--John R.M.
Wilson, Southern California College
"An articulate, well-researched, intellectual biography."--The International History Review
"A magisterial on George Frost Kennan's enormous influence....Eminently well suited for professionals in the area of foreign policymaking and diplomatic history, as well as for an audience of mature university students....The definitive work on the subject."--Perspective
"This well-written analysis of George Kennan's career as a scholar-diplomat shed new light on the complexities of a professional life whose broad outlines are known to general readers as well as specialists....[Kennan] has found a worthy intellectual biographer in David Mayers."--International Affairs
"A conscientious and scrupulously fair scholar, Mayers examines Kennan's works and career with a thoroughness never before attempted....[This] is a serious work that provides the best detailed account we have of Kennan as diplomat, analyst, and critic."--Ronald Steel, The New York Review of Books
"A serious work that provides the best detailed account we have of Kennan as diplomat, analyst, and critic."--Ronald Steel, The New York Review of Books
"This excellent intellectual biography explores almost sixty years of Kennan's published and unpublished writings. One of the most interesting themes involves the tension between Kennan's preference for a foreign policy conducted by a highly educated and well-mannered elite and the turbulent, inefficient reality of American democratic society."--Foreign Affairs
"Gracefully written and thoroughly researched, Mayers's study provides not only insight into Kennan's complex character development but also allows us to see the larger problems and possibilities associated with the conduct of modern American foreign policy."--International Journal
"The most cogent and complete chronicle yet written of Mr. Kennan's ideas and strategic concepts."--Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review
"The best of the new critical studies of Kennan."--The New Republic
"The best of the new critical studies of Kennan is by David Mayers, a young political scientist who has succeeded in writing a thoughtful study of Kennan's long career that is entirely fair, critical yet scrupulous."--The New Republic
"The most cogent and complete chronicle yet written of Mr. Kennan's ideas and strategic concepts....Mayers provides a valuable service with his analysis of a farsighted man whose ideas have too often been obscured by those who admire them."--Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review
"Riveting....Both the foreign policy expert and the nonspecialist can learn much from this book. Particularly helpful is Mayers' retrospective summary at the end of each chapter of how Kennan was wrong, and how he was (often prophetically) right....I would make this book required reading in any university-level beginning international relations course."--The Christian Science Monitor
"The first intellectual biography of Kennan, combining his personal and intellectual development with the evolution of his career and long post-Washington role as critic of the containment policy he helped author."--Choice
"A commendable effort in terms of both research and judgment. For coverage, treatment, organization, and general writing style I believe that Mayers has done very well with an important subject."--Norman A. Graebner, University of Virginia
"A very well-researched, scrupulously fair, comprehensive, balanced, and subtle account of George Kennan's contribution to and critical views about American foreign policy. Professor Mayers never oversimplifies, nor does he conceal the flaws, mistakes, and fundamental essential conservatism of his subject. But he pays a fulsome and thoughtful tribute to Kennan's humane wisdom."--Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard University
"Specialists...should be impressed by the author's wide- ranging research in primary and secondary materials; by his judiciousness in praising Kennan's contributions and pointing out his failings; and by the graceful, unpretentious writing that is more the exception than the norm in contemporary scholarship. In short, this is an excellent book that should be required reading for anyone who teaches or writes about twentieth-century American foriegn
policy."--Journal of American History
"An excellent book that should be required reading for anyone who teaches or writes about twentieth-century American foreign policy."--Journal of American History
"A superb book that fills in many missing details on a story whose outline is already known....A richly detailed account....Mayers has amassed voluminous material, organized it brilliantly, written it beautifully, and offered scores of profound insights."--American Historical Review
