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Maybe someday
42
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
49/100Critics
35/100Scholars
Author:
Thomas Alan Schwartz
Publisher:
Hill & Wang
Date:
August 25, 2020
A look back at one of the 20th century's most controversial political figures, Richard Nixon's national security advisor and Secretary of State, exploring both his successes and failures.
What The Reviewers Say
In his very fine political biography...Thomas A. Schwartz takes a fairly conventional approach and addresses the expected issues.
Drawing on a vast amount of primary sources (including interviews with the man himself), Schwartz carefully charts Kissinger's evolution as one of the 20th century's most controversial statesmen.
Kissinger’s contribution to the making of American power in the face of severe challenges from the Vietnam War to the oil crisis constitute the large work of diplomacy, statecraft, and national interest, but Schwartz places Kissinger in the middle of the petty realism of domestic and bureaucratic politics.
The author recognizes Kissinger’s (and Nixon’s) accomplishments—the opening to China, triangular diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union, shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East—but sees politics and personal ambition as the driving force of policy. This is unfair to Kissinger (and to Nixon, for that matter).
