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).

... [a] deeply researched, first-rate narrative.

Schwartz grounds his analysis of Kissinger’s distinguished intellectual background with thorough coverage of his youth and academic life, and his voluminous writings. Kissinger’s ideological posture vacillated dramatically, and it is Schwartz’s great strength that he deals objectively with the manifold sides of his subject’s personality: Machiavellian, reckless, prone to 'creative ambiguity.' This is a sophisticated, well-textured study of a major figure in American political history..

The author downplays some of the more 'thundering moral pronouncements of condemnations' leveled at Kissinger over the years.

Schwartz provides succinct explanations of key strategies such as 'triangular diplomacy,' but the book’s comprehensive coverage of all the international conflicts Kissinger dealt with doesn’t allow for too much deep analysis. Schwartz also treats controversies, such as allegations that Kissinger leaked privileged information about peace talks with North Vietnam to Nixon’s camp during the 1968 election, rather lightly. Still, this exhaustive yet accessible account serves as a worthwhile introduction to Kissinger and the geopolitics of the 1960s and ’70s..