The Wise Men Six Friends and the World They Made

by Isaacson, Walter; Thomas, Evan

• ISBN13: 9781451683226
• ISBN10: 1451683227
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-08
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

With a new Introduction by the authors, this is the classic account of the American statesmen who rebuilt the world after the catastrophe of World War II. The Wise Men introduces the original brightest and best, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, 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, author of Containment; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense during 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.

Author Biography

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography.
Evan Thomas is the author of The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the C.I.A.; Robert Kennedy: His Life; The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst and the Rush to Empire, 1989; Sea of Thunder: The Last Great Naval Command, 1941-1945; and John Paul Jones. He is at work on a book about President Dwight Eisenhower.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 13
Architects of the American Century	p. 17
Gathering	p. 37
World of Their Own/To the manner born	p. 39
Tap Days/"To run with the swift"	p. 65
Joint Ventures/Harriman and Lovett on Wall Street	p. 98
World Courts/McCloy and Acheson before the bar	p. 119
A Pretty Good Club/Kennan and Bohlen in the Foreign Service	p. 140
On Active Service/Enlisting in a noble cause	p. 179
Heavenly Twins/McCloy and Lovett at the War Department	p. 191
Missions to Moscow/Harriman, Acheson, Bohlen and Kennan wrestle with a biting bear	p. 210
Creation	p. 251
Words of One Syllable/The education of Harry Truman	p. 253
Line down the Middle/Splitting Germany and the atom	p. 288
The Blinding Dawn/Diplomacy in an atomic age	p. 314
Containment/Sensitive to the logic of force	p. 347
Order from Chaos/"Like apples in a barrel"	p. 386
"Simple Honest Menö/The selling of the Marshall Plan	p. 419
Crisis/"Will Russia move first?"	p. 439
"A Different Worldö/Of Super bombs and primitives	p. 480
War/"No weakness of purpose hereö	p. 505
Nadir/Disaster at the Yalu	p. 535
Exile/The wilderness years	p. 559
Wise Men	p. 587
Passing the Torch/"No, sir, my bearings are burnt out"	p. 589
Twilight Struggles/Reunion at the brink	p. 605
LBJ's Establishment/"! told the President he was wholly right"	p. 642
Judgment Days/Last Supper of the Wise Men	p. 676
Legacy/"Never in such good company"	p. 714
Acknowledgments	p. 742
Notes	p. 745
Sources	p. 809
Index	p. 833
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