The New York Times Book Review - John A. Farrell
…a timely and acute defense of the great realist's actions, values and beliefs…Gewen's book is a thoughtful rumination on human behavior, philosophy and international relations, not a womb-to-tomb biography…
From the Publisher
"Timely and acute.… A thoughtful rumination on human behavior, philosophy and international relations."— John A. Farrell New York Times Book Review
"Barry Gewen has accomplished, in this magisterial work, what few of Henry Kissinger’s biographers have even undertaken."— David A. Andelman Wall Street Journal
"A sterling, highly readable intellectual biography.... Gewen convincingly argues that a full appreciation of Kissinger’s realist philosophy is now more important than ever."— Jessica T. Matthews Foreign Affairs
"A revelation.… Gewen’s book is more than a biography; it is a thorough exploration of Kissinger’s world-view and how he came to it."— Dennis Ross Jewish Review of Books
"Incisive.… Demands to be studied."— Michael Hirsh Foreign Policy
"Explains why Kissinger’s thinking—his view of history, power, and democracy—should command our attention.… [Barry] Gewen deftly sets him in the wider context of the rise of totalitarianism in the past century, seeking to understand Kissinger as he understood himself."— Jacob Heilbrunn National Interest
"Highly readable.… Gewen’s prose is mellifluous."— Lloyd Green Guardian
"Gewen seeks to escape [a] cartoon depiction of Kissinger, absurd in its Manichaean extremes. He does so successfully with sympathy for his subject, subtlety, good writing and not a little humor.… Gewen tells us that Kissinger is more than a figure out of history, and that we dismiss or ignore him at our peril."— Christopher Meyer Spectator
"Timely… provides new insight into what might have gone wrong and landed the US in a late imperial funk."— Iain Martin Times (UK)
"Deeply insightful.… This more-than-four-decade split of authority suggests the need for fresh views and intellectually honest discourse on Kissinger’s diplomatic career, and Gewen has risen to the challenge."— Talmage Boston Washington Independent Review of Books
"Barry Gewen’s extraordinary study seeks neither to condemn nor defend Henry Kissinger but to comprehend him. With a keen understanding of the nuances of Cold War politics and diplomacy, from every angle, Gewen cuts to the core of Kissinger’s Realism, haunted by the twentieth century’s lessons that democracy and good intentions can just as easily produce catastrophe as uplift. A tour de force of historical reconstruction, the book flatters no one, least of all its readers. It will make you think hard about world events that continue to shape our lives, and about one of the truly major figures of our times."— Sean Wilentz, George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History, Princeton University
"Ingeniously organized, flawlessly argued, this big book moves with the speed of a magazine essay. Its signal point is incontrovertible: that in a messy, shrinking world where little is black and white and America is no longer protected by oceans, Henry Kissinger’s tragic Realism becomes increasingly relevant and increasingly undeniable."— Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2020-01-12
Masterly work on the making of Henry Kissinger—and what American foreign policy can learn from his dark experience and pessimistic outlook.
In this deeply thoughtful, meticulously researched work, longtime New York Times Book Review editor Gewen looks at both Kissinger's life experiences—e.g., his teen years as a Jew in Bavaria living under Nazi persecution—and his assimilation of the academic work of fellow German Jewish intellectuals Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and Hans Morgenthau as he steered American statecraft in the 1970s. While Kissinger is considered by some as criminal, even evil, for his advocating for the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, and other dispassionate realpolitik decisions as secretary of state under Richard Nixon, Gewen takes a more philosophical approach to his subject, delving into the reasons behind Kissinger's coolheaded "assessment of power" and refusal to be swayed by "high moral principles like self-determination or national sovereignty." Because he was hounded by the Nazis during his youth, Kissinger recognized the "realities of power" and, through his own father's "powerlessness," began to believe that "weakness…was synonymous with death" (as he wrote near the end of World War II). Kissinger was deeply influenced by the work of Strauss and Arendt, who "opposed tyranny but nursed a deep suspicion of democracy and majoritarian processes," and became a colleague to Morgenthau, who eschewed traditional moralistic certainties for an approach based more on "incrementalism and perfectionism," "stability rather than justice," and "the less bad rather than the unqualified good." In this well-measured, beautifully written book, Gewen thoroughly considers each facet of Kissinger's evolution and how his choice of "less bad" became his modus operandi—e.g., the "Christmas bombing" of North Vietnam at the end of 1972, forcing Hanoi to the negotiating table—ultimately tarnishing his elusive, urbane legacy.
Gewen has used the distance from events to refine his research into an elegant, elucidating study of comparative statecraft.
