Born into the Virginia gentry, David K. E. Bruce was, and in the words of his brother-in-law Paul Mellon, "the very epitome of the Greek Aristos." Handsome, brilliant, and entirely at ease with his own wealth and the fabulous Mellon riches, he was the perfect young dilettante. But as he matured and World War II loomed, he devoted himself to public service and to turning American foreign policy from isolationism to world leadership - and went on to become ambassador to three crucial countries and an adviser and confidant to every president from Harry Truman to Gerald Ford.
During the war he headed OSS spy operations in London and, with his pal Ernest Hemingway, was among the first Americans to enter Paris. After the war he headed the Marshall Plan in France during the critical years when it seemed that France might turn to communism.
He played a crucial part in building the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the gift to the nation of his father-in-law, Andrew Mellon. When Bruce divorced Ailsa Mellon after enduring years of her chronic mental illness, he remained close friends with her brother, Paul.
Bruce then married the talented and elusive beauty Evangeline Bell, who had worked for him in the OSS. When JFK sent him to Britain as ambassador to cement the "special relationship" between the English-speaking peoples, he and Evangeline were among London's most sought-after couples. After the London post, Bruce retired until Nixon and Kissinger asked him to lead the "peace" negotiations with the North Vietnamese.
Later, in declining health, he became America's first diplomatic representative to China.
Behind the glittering facade of diplomacy and international high society, however, the ambassador stoically endured great personal tragedies: the violent deaths of his two daughters.
Industry Reviews
An admiring biography of a neglected figure in America's mid-20th-century rise to global ascendancy. A scholarly study of the extraordinary career of David K.E. Bruce (1898-1977) would be welcome. Lankford, regrettably, has chosen to write a celebratory, one-dimensional study. A good storyteller, the author ladles out admiration for each of the privileged worlds that young Bruce inhabited: Born into the landed gentry of segregated Virginia, growing up in Gilded Age Baltimore, graduating from Princeton. As an officer in the post-WW I army, Bruce developed a taste for the glories of war, sampled at a safe distance from any action. After marrying Ailsa Mellon, one of the wealthiest women in the world, Bruce became a confidant and art adviser to his father-in-law Andrew Mellon, one of the wealthiest men in the world. Lankford's greatest enthusiasm is reserved for Bruce's central role in building up the new post-WW II American empire, based on free trade, global military interventionism, and a worldwide covert operations network. Like so many other Cold War power brokers, Bruce began a diplomatic career through his friendship with William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the founder of the OSS (later the CIA). Contacts in the intelligence community led to diplomatic appointments, including stints as ambassador to France and Britain, and a special mission to China. "Tall, erect, gray-templed, distinguished in appearence, he was the model image of an ambassador," Lankford asserts. And his aristocratic indifference to the common people served him well in the rarefied world of old-boy networks in the intelligence and diplomatic communities. Bruce might have been, in his personal tastes and demeanor, the last American aristocrat (or at least the last to act as if governing was his by right), but he is far from being the last privileged American to step effortlessly from inherited wealth to immense political power. (Kirkus Reviews)
