The Wise Men

This book is a collective biography of the best and brightest men in government and their foreign policies which dominate our actions to this day. It includes data on World War II diplomacy, the Cold War, Communist containment, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, Kennedy and Johnson diplomacy, and Vietnam War diplomacy. A blend of personal biography and public drama, it introduces the original best and brightest, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, the 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, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout the formative years of 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.