Kissinger: 1923-1968: the idealist

No American statesman has been as revered and as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Yet as Niall Ferguson shows in this magisterial biography, the idea of Kissinger as the ruthless arch-realist is based on a profound misunderstanding. Drawing not only on Kissinger's hitherto closed private papers but also on documents from more than a hundred archives around the world, Ferguson argues that the true foundation of Kissinger's thought is philosophical idealism. This first of two volumes examines Kissinger's considerable achievements before his appointment as Nixon's national security adviser. He spent his adolescence toiling in a New York factory, studying at night, then served in the U.S. infantry during the Second World War before finding his vocation at Harvard, where he shot to celebrity by arguing for "limited nuclear war" and was subsequently hired by Nelson Rockefeller and called to Camelot by Kennedy. The Idealist is the story of the single most important strategic thinker America has ever produced. It is also a political Bildungsroman, explaining how "Dr. Strangelove" ended up as consigliere to a politician he had always abhorred. Like Ferguson's classic two-volume history of the House of Rothschild, Kissinger sheds dazzling new light on an entire era. The essential account of an extraordinary life, it recasts the cold war world.