George F. Kennan: An American Life

by John Lewis Gaddis

Overview

Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year

Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind.

In the late 1940s, George Kennan wrote two documents, the "Long Telegram" and the "X Article," which set forward the strategy of containment that would define U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next four decades. This achievement alone would qualify him as the most influential American diplomat of the Cold War era. But he was also an architect of the Marshall Plan, a prizewinning historian, and would become one of the most outspoken critics of American diplomacy, politics, and culture during the last half of the twentieth century. Now the full scope of Kennan's long life and vast influence is revealed by one of today's most important Cold War scholars.

Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis began this magisterial history almost thirty years ago, interviewing Kennan frequently and gaining complete access to his voluminous diaries and other personal papers. So frank and detailed were these materials that Kennan and Gaddis agreed that the book would not appear until after Kennan's death. It was well worth the wait: the journals give this book a breathtaking candor and intimacy that match its century-long sweep.

We see Kennan's insecurity as a Midwesterner among elites at Princeton, his budding dissatisfaction with authority and the status quo, his struggles with depression, his gift for satire, and his sharp insights on the policies and people he encountered. Kennan turned these sharp analytical gifts upon himself, even to the point of regularly recording dreams. The result is a remarkably revealing view of how this greatest of Cold War strategists came to doubt his strategy and always doubted himself.

This is a landmark work of history and biography that reveals the vast influence and rich inner landscape of a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594203121
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/10/2011
Pages:	800
Product dimensions:	9.46(w) x 6.58(h) x 1.61(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. His previous books include The United States and the Origins of the Cold War; Strategies of Containment; The Long Peace; We Now Know; The Landscape of History; Surprise, Security, and the American Experience; and The Cold War: A New History. Professor Gaddis teaches courses on Cold War history, grand strategy, international studies, and biography; has won two Yale undergraduate teaching awards; and was a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Part I

1 Childhood: 1904-1921 3

2 Princeton: 1921-1925 23

3 The Foreign Service: 1925-1931 39

4 Marriage-and Moscow: 1931-1933 60

Part II

5 The Origins of Soviet-American Relations: 1933-1936 79

6 Rediscovering America: 1936-1938 99

7 Czechoslovakia and Germany: 1938-1941 120

8 The United States at War: 1941-1944 147

9 Back in the U.S.S.R.: 1944-1945 172

10 A Very Long Telegram: 1945-1946 201

Part III

11 A Grand Strategic Education: 1946 225

12 Mr. X: 1947 249

13 Policy Planner: 1947-1948 276

14 Policy Dissenter: 1948 309

15 Reprieve: 1949 337

16 Disengagement: 1950 371

Part IV

17 Public Figure, Private Doubts: 1950-1951 407

18 Mr. Ambassador: 1952 439

19 Finding a Niche: 1953-1955 477

20 A Rare Possibility of Usefulness: 1955-1958 506

21 Kennedy and Yugoslavia: 1958-1963 538

Part V

22 Counter-Cultural Critic: 1963-1968 577

23 Prophet of the Apocalypse: 1968-1980 613

24 A Precarious Vindication: 1980-1990 647

25 Last Things: 1991-2005 676

Epilogue: Greatness 693

Acknowledgments 699

Abbreviations to Notes and Bibliography 701

Notes 703

Bibliography 751

Index 763

What People are Saying About This

Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft

"George Kennan was the great architect of the Cold War strategy of containment, but in later years he became one of its most vociferous critics. John Lewis Gaddis, perhaps the Cold War's greatest living historian, explains this remarkable journey in fascinating detail, reckoning brilliantly with the life and meaning of one of the great thinkers and characters of our age and, indeed , of the history of American diplomacy. For all who struggle to achieve some larger perspective on world events, the example of George Kennan, in John Lewis Gaddis's hands, makes for inspiring and engrossing reading." --(Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret.); former National Security Advisor; and President of The Scowcroft Group)

George P. Shultz

"When a great historian writes about a great man, the result is bound to be outstanding. This book exceeds even that high expectation." --(George P. Shultz, author of Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State; former U.S. Secretary of State; Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University)

Walter Isaacson

"In this magisterial and authorized work, based on complete access to private diaries and papers, Professor Gaddis gives us a deeply personal look at George Kennan and shows how his personality, philosophy and policy ideas wove together. The result is the definitive biography of one of the most influential and fascinating foreign policy thinkers of the 20th century—a triumph of both scholarship and narrative writing."--( Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein and Benjamin Franklin; President and CEO of The Aspen Institute)

Editorial Reviews

No one is better suited than Gaddis to write this authorized biography of George F. Kennan: the noted Yale cold war historian had total access to Kennan’s papers as well as to his family members and associates—Kennan so trusted his biographer that he remarked, “write , if you will, on the confident assumption that no account need be taken of my own reaction... either in this world or the next.” Through his privileged relationship with Kennan, Gaddis reveals the man behind the public persona as an agonized and fragile individual who often felt alienated from the U.S. and his fellow citizens, despite his tireless service to his country. In addition to the intimacies of the work, Gaddis offers critical analyses of Kennan’s key roles as diplomat, policy maker, and scholar of Russian history. Unsurpassed in his strategic vision during the cold war, Kennan is credited with being responsible for much of America’s eventual victory, and therein lies the impetus behind this remarkable biography. Adroitly managed (if occasionally barnacled with extraneous facts), Gaddis’s work is a major contribution to Kennan’s legacy and the history of American foreign policy. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

George F. Kennan: An American Life" turns out to be not only an epic work —probing, engrossing, occasionally revelatory — but also a well-timed one. It appears just as its subject has been nearly forgotten and long enough after the 20th century has passed to appreciate his towering significance.

New York Times

Kennan's combination of brutal self-examination and thin-skinned responses to critics (be they policy makers or historians) gives the impression that he hoped to have a monopoly on Kennan criticism. Surely aware that even a sympathetic scholar like Gaddis would have points of disagreement, Kennan protected himself by insuring the biography wouldn't appear in his lifetime. While some books put an end to the study of a subject, it seems more likely that Gaddis's monumental work marks only the beginning. We can now read Kennan not just for his powerful but fleeting influence on foreign policy, but also for social and psychological insights from one of the most introspective figures of modern American life. And who can predict what the future generations will make of the 20th century's most influential 18th-century man?

The Chronicle Review

Gaddis clearly has much more sympathy with Reagan's policy than with Kennan's critique. Indeed it is one of the strengths of his book that while the author is a huge admirer of Kennan, he does not attempt to disguise or excuse his failings. Kennan was a reserved and scholarly man who found himself increasingly disgusted with what he saw as the decadence of modern America - and the west in general. At times he even seemed to despair of democracy itself. In 1976, he predicted gloomily: "I think this country is destined to succumb to failures which cannot be other than tragic and enormous in their scope." Part of him seemed to believe that modern America deserved to fail. In the same interview, he remarked: "I can see very little merit in organising ourselves to defend from the Russians the porno shops in central Washington." Gaddis comments tartly: "This and much else in the interview was self-indulgent nonsense."

The Financial Times

Mr. Gaddis's admiration for Kennan is obvious, but it does not stop him from portraying his subject's flaws— an immense ego, a deep insecurity, a volatile temperament. "George F. Kennan: An American Life" is a major achievement. One senses that Kennan himself, at his best a bold truth-teller, would have been pleased.

The Wall Street Journal

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) exerted a profound influence on the conduct of American foreign policy, especially during the years of the Cold War. His famous 1947 Foreign Affairs article, "Sources of Soviet Conduct," published under the pseudonym X, laid the theoretical groundwork for "containing" the Soviet Union in those hectic and dangerous postwar years. As Kennan's authorized biographer, Gaddis (The Cold War: A New History)—himself one of our most distinguished diplomatic historians—had unfettered access to Kennan's diaries and personal papers. The result is a nearly 800-page book with by far the most sophisticated and nuanced examination of Kennan's remarkable contributions to our nation during his lengthy life. Gaddis's portrayal of Kennan's personal life is more workmanlike, with less nuance. VERDICT Gaddis has crafted an in-depth study of Kennan as a thinker and practicing diplomat. The focus on Kennan as foreign policy maker will not trouble most scholars of the diplomatic arts, but for the average reader the level of detail may prove more burdensome. Highly recommended for Cold War scholars and for all library collections, alongside Nicholas Thompson's more personal The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War. [See Prepub Alert, 5/2/11.]—Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

Library Journal

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