Download or read book George Kennan for Our Time written by Lee Congdon and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Kennan for Our Time examines the work and thought of the most distinguished American diplomat of the twentieth century and extracts lessons for today. In his writings and lectures, Kennan outlined the proper conduct of foreign policy and issued warnings to an American society on the edge of the abyss. Lee Congdon identifies the principles Kennan applied to US relations with Russia and Eastern Europe, and to the Far and Near East. He takes particular note of Kennan's role in formulating postwar policy in Japan, measured response to North Korea's invasion of South Korea, and opposition to the war in Vietnam. Congdon also considers Kennan's strong criticisms of his own country, its egalitarianism, unrestricted immigration, and multiple addictions. He cites Kennan's call for a greater closeness to nature, a revival of religious faith, and a return to the representative government established by the Founding Fathers. George Kennan for Our Time describes the often-disastrous results of rejecting Kennan's counsel, and the dangers, international and national, posed by an ongoing failure to draw upon his wisdom. In view of America's foreign policy disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world, Kennan's realist approach provides important lessons for our current age.

Download or read book George F Kennan written by John Lewis Gaddis and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Biography Widely and enthusiastically acclaimed, this is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most fascinating but troubled figures of the twentieth century by the nation's leading Cold War historian. In the late 1940s, George F. Kennan—then a bright but, relatively obscure American diplomat—wrote the "long telegram" and the "X" article. These two documents laid out United States' strategy for "containing" the Soviet Union—a strategy which Kennan himself questioned in later years. Based on exclusive access to Kennan and his archives, this landmark history illuminates a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.

Download or read book The Kennan Diaries written by George F. Kennan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-02-16 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark collection, spanning ninety years of U.S. history, of the never-before-published diaries of George F. Kennan, America’s most famous diplomat. On a hot July afternoon in 1953, George F. Kennan descended the steps of the State Department building as a newly retired man. His career had been tumultuous: early postings in eastern Europe followed by Berlin in 1940–41 and Moscow in the last year of World War II. In 1946, the forty-two-year-old Kennan authored the “Long Telegram,” a 5,500-word indictment of the Kremlin that became mandatory reading in Washington. A year later, in an article in Foreign Affairs, he outlined “containment,” America’s guiding strategy in the Cold War. Yet what should have been the pinnacle of his career—an ambassadorship in Moscow in 1952—was sabotaged by Kennan himself, deeply frustrated at his failure to ease the Cold War that he had helped launch. Yet, if it wasn’t the pinnacle, neither was it the capstone; over the next fifty years, Kennan would become the most respected foreign policy thinker of the twentieth century, giving influential lectures, advising presidents, and authoring twenty books, winning two Pulitzer prizes and two National Book awards in the process. Through it all, Kennan kept a diary. Spanning a staggering eighty-eight years and totaling over 8,000 pages, his journals brim with keen political and moral insights, philosophical ruminations, poetry, and vivid descriptions. In these pages, we see Kennan rambling through 1920s Europe as a college student, despairing for capitalism in the midst of the Depression, agonizing over the dilemmas of sex and marriage, becoming enchanted and then horrified by Soviet Russia, and developing into America’s foremost Soviet analyst. But it is the second half of this near-century-long record—the blossoming of Kennan the gifted author, wise counselor, and biting critic of the Vietnam and Iraq wars—that showcases this remarkable man at the height of his singular analytic and expressive powers, before giving way, heartbreakingly, to some of his most human moments, as his energy, memory, and finally his ability to write fade away. Masterfully selected and annotated by historian Frank Costigliola, the result is a landmark work of profound intellectual and emotional power. These diaries tell the complete narrative of Kennan’s life in his own intimate and unflinching words and, through him, the arc of world events in the twentieth century.

Download or read book George Kennan written by John Lukacs and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-24 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man of impressive mental powers, of extraordinary intellectual range, and—last but not least—of exceptional integrity, George Frost Kennan (1904-2005) was an adviser to presidents and secretaries of state, with a decisive role in the history of this country (and of the entire world) for a few crucial years in the 1940s, after which he was made to retire; but then he became a scholar who wrote seventeen books, scores of essays and articles, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. He also wrote remarkable public lectures and many thousands of incisive letters, laying down his pen only in the hundredth year of his life. Having risen within the American Foreign Service and been posted to various European capitals, and twice to Moscow, Kennan was called back to Washington in 1946, where he helped to inspire the Truman Doctrine and draft the Marshall Plan. Among other things, he wrote the 'X' or 'Containment' article for which he became, and still is, world famous (an article which he regarded as not very important and liable to misreading). John Lukacs describes the development and the essence of Kennan's thinking; the—perhaps unavoidable—misinterpretations of his advocacies; his self-imposed task as a leading realist critic during the Cold War; and the importance of his work as a historian during the second half of his long life.

Download or read book Remembering George Kennan written by Melvyn P. Leffler and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George F. Kennan, the father of containment, was a rather obscure and frustrated foreign service officer at the U.S. embassy in Moscow when his "Long Telegram" of February 1946 gained the attention of policymakers in Washington and transformed his career. What is Kennan's legacy and the implications of his thinking for the contemporary era? Is it possible to reconcile Kennan's legacy with the newfound emphasis on a "democratic peace?"

Download or read book Mr X and the Pacific written by Paul J. Heer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George F. Kennan is well known as the preeminent American expert on the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the author of the doctrine of containment. In Mr. X and the Pacific, Paul J. Heer chronicles and assesses Kennan's work in affecting US policy toward East Asia. Heer traces the origins, development, and bearing of Kennan's strategic perspective on the Far East during his time as director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff from 1947 to 1950. The author follows Kennan's career and evolution of his thinking as he subsequently became a prominent critic of American participation in the Vietnam War. Mr. X and the Pacific offers readers a new view of Kennan, revealing his importance and the totality of his role in East Asia policy, his struggle with American foreign policy in the region, and the ways in which Kennan's legacy still has implications for how the United States approaches the region in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Master Negotiator written by Diana Villiers Negroponte and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-20 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As secretary of state, James A. Baker III played a critical role on the world stage in the final years of the Cold War as the Soviet Union unraveled. His political sense and the ability to test Soviet leaders, negotiate insoluble problems in the Middle East, charm friends, and achieve the placement of a unified Germany in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were unmatched. Diana Villiers Negroponte, an author, lawyer, and professor, highlights how Baker mobilized a coalition of international military forces, including the Soviets, to repel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Baker seduced Israeli and West Bank Palestinians to meet face to face and begin the Oslo peace process and ended two civil wars in Central America. While he was initially hesitant about the Nunn Lugar bill to safeguard Soviet nuclear weapons, he became a driving force to transport nuclear material to secure sites in Russia. The author also highlights Baker’s failures, such as the inability to hold Yugoslavia together or to provide sufficient funds to stop the collapse of the Soviet economy. With a foreword written by former President George H.W. Bush, this book reveals Baker’s skills as a statesman—and explores how he changed the world.

Download or read book Through the History of the Cold War written by John Lukacs and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In September 1952, John Lukacs, then a young and unknown historian, wrote George Kennan (1904-2005), the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, asking one of the nation's best-known diplomats what he thought of Lukacs's own views on Kennan's widely debated idea of containing rather than militarily confronting the Soviet Union. A month later, to Lukacs's surprise, he received a personal reply from Kennan. So began an exchange of letters that would continue for more than fifty years. Lukacs would go on to become one of America's most distinguished and prolific diplomatic historians, while Kennan, who would retire from public life to begin a new career as Pulitzer Prize-winning author, would become revered as the man whose strategy of containment led to a peaceful end to the Cold War. Their letters, collected here for the first time, capture the writing and thinking of two of the country's most important voices on America's role and place in world affairs. From the division of Europe into East and West after World War II to its unification as the Soviet Union disintegrated, and from the war in Vietnam to the threat of nuclear annihilation and the fate of democracy in America and the world, this book provides an insider's tour of the issues and pivotal events that defined the Cold War. The correspondence also charts the growth and development of an intellectual and personal friendship that was intense, devoted, and honest. As Kennan later wrote Lukacs in letter, "perceptive, understanding, and constructive criticism is . . . as I see it, in itself a form of creative philosophical thought." It is a belief to which both men subscribed and that they both practiced. Presented with an introduction by Lukacs, the letters in Through the History of the Cold War reveal new dimensions to Kennan's thinking about America and its future, and illuminate the political—and spiritual—philosophies that the two authors shared as they wrote about a world transformed by war and by the clash of ideologies that defined the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Hawk and the Dove written by Nicholas Thompson and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant and revealing biography of the two most important Americans during the Cold War era—written by the grandson of one of them Only two Americans held positions of great influence throughout the Cold War; ironically, they were the chief advocates for the opposing strategies for winning—and surviving—that harrowing conflict. Both men came to power during World War II, reached their professional peaks during the Cold War's most frightening moments, and fought epic political battles that spanned decades. Yet despite their very different views, Paul Nitze and George Kennan dined together, attended the weddings of each other's children, and remained good friends all their lives. In this masterly double biography, Nicholas Thompson brings Nitze and Kennan to vivid life. Nitze—the hawk—was a consummate insider who believed that the best way to avoid a nuclear clash was to prepare to win one. More than any other American, he was responsible for the arms race. Kennan—the dove—was a diplomat turned academic whose famous "X article" persuasively argued that we should contain the Soviet Union while waiting for it to collapse from within. For forty years, he exercised more influence on foreign affairs than any other private citizen. As he weaves a fascinating narrative that follows these two rivals and friends from the beginning of the Cold War to its end, Thompson accomplishes something remarkable: he tells the story of our nation during the most dangerous half century in history.

Download or read book Daughter of the Cold War written by Grace Kennan Warnecke and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2018-04-11 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grace Kennan Warnecke's memoir is about a life lived on the edge of history. Daughter of one of the most influential diplomats of the twentieth century, wife of the scion of a newspaper dynasty and mother of the youngest owner of a major league baseball team, Grace eventually found her way out from under the shadows of others to forge a dynamic career of her own. Born in Latvia, Grace lived in seven countries and spoke five languages before the age of eleven. As a child, she witnessed Hitler’s march into Prague, attended a Soviet school during World War II, and sailed the seas with her father. In a multi-faceted career, she worked as a professional photographer, television producer, and book editor and critic. Eventually, like her father, she became a Russian specialist, but of a very different kind. She accompanied Ted Kennedy and his family to Russia, escorted Joan Baez to Moscow to meet with dissident Andrei Sakharov, and hosted Josef Stalin’s daughter on the family farm after Svetlana defected to the United States. While running her own consulting company in Russia, she witnessed the breakup of the Soviet Union, and later became director of a women’s economic empowerment project in a newly independent Ukraine. Daughter of the Cold War is a tale of all these adventures and so much more. This compelling and evocative memoir allows readers to follow Grace's amazing path through life – a whirlwind journey of survival, risk, and self-discovery through a kaleidoscope of many countries, historic events, and fascinating people.

Download or read book George F Kennan s Strategic Thought written by Richard L. Russell and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1999-04-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George F. Kennan's strategic thought was instrumental in the formulation of the American grand strategy of containment of the Soviet Union. As Dr. Russell points out, Kennan's strategic thought was forged in the diplomatic practice and scholarship of the time. Russell looks beyond containment, however, to sift through Kennan's work to illuminate the worldview that informed his analysis of international relations and American foreign policy. Kennan's realist worldview contained principles for governing American diplomacy and the use of force to achieve national interests within the bounds set by the international competition for power between nation-states. Kennan's worldview illuminates the continuities of international politics that are often overlooked because of the massive changes in the post-Cold War world. Ironically, Kennan's worldview continues to provide a theoretical footing for guiding American foreign policy after containment. This is an important study for scholars, policymakers, and concerned citizens interested in international relations, American foreign policy, diplomatic history, and strategic studies.

Download or read book At a Century s Ending written by George Frost Kennan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new volume of essays, reviews, and speeches, statesman George F. Kennan reflects on the forces that have shaped this tragic century. "It is an inspiration to read (Kennan's) reflections on the eternal truths of mortality and power".--John Keegan, "London Daily Telegraph".

Download or read book The Wise Men written by Walter Isaacson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997-06-04 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Russia Leaves the War written by George Frost Kennan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-24 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize From acclaimed diplomat and historian George Kennan, a landmark history of the crucial months in 1917–1918 that forged the pattern of Soviet-American relations When the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, American diplomats in St. Petersburg and Moscow were thrown into a bewildering situation. Should the new regime be recognized? What was its true nature? And was there any way to keep Russia fighting against Germany in the Great War? In vivid detail, George Kennan’s classic history tells the gripping story of the Americans’ furious, and ultimately failed, efforts to strike a deal to keep the Soviets in the war—and how these events set the pattern of future relations between the two emerging superpowers. In a new foreword, Kennan biographer Frank Costigliola puts the book in the context of its Cold War publication and Kennan’s life.

Download or read book The Back Channel written by William Joseph Burns and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a distinguished and admired American diplomat of the last half century, Burns has played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his time: from the bloodless end of the Cold War and post-Cold War relations with Putin's Russia to the secret nuclear talks with Iran. Here he recounts some of the seminal moments of his career, drawing on newly declassified cables and memos to give readers a rare, inside look at American diplomacy in action, and of the people who worked with him. The result is an powerful reminder of the enduring importance of diplomacy. -- adapted from jacket

Download or read book The Fateful Alliance written by George Frost Kennan and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the Russian-French alliance of 1894 and what went wrong in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century.

Download or read book The Free World written by Louis Menand and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An engrossing and impossibly wide-ranging project . . . In The Free World, every seat is a good one." —Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post "The Free World sparkles. Fully original, beautifully written . . . One hopes Menand has a sequel in mind. The bar is set very high." —David Oshinsky, The New York Times Book Review | Editors' Choice One of The New York Times's 100 best books of 2021 | One of The Washington Post's 50 best nonfiction books of 2021 | A Mother Jones best book of 2021 In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense—economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind. How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal of “freedom” applied to causes that ranged from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight familiar to readers of The Metaphysical Club and his New Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt’s Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s residencies at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, and the Memphis studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new music for the American teenager. He examines the post war vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop art, Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin’s transformation into a Civil Right spokesman, Susan Sontag’s challenges to the New York Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise of the New Hollywood. Stressing the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the end of the Second World War, but America’s once-despised culture had become respected and adored. With unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that happened.