The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

by Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas Narrated by Jonathan Reese

Overview

Six close friends shaped the role their country would play in the dangerous years following World War II. They were the original best and brightest, whose towering intellects, outsize personalities, and dramatic actions would bring order to the postwar chaos, and whose strong response to Soviet expansionism would leave a legacy that dominates American policy to this day.

In April 1945, they converged to advise an untutored new president, Harry Truman. They were 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, selfcast 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.

Together they formulated a doctrine of Communist containment that was to be the foundation of American policy, and years later, when much of what they stood for appeared to be sinking in the mire of Vietnam, they were summoned for their steady counsel. It was then that they were dubbed "the Wise Men." Working in an atmosphere of trust that in today's Washington would seem quaint, they shaped a new world order that committed a once-reticent nation to defending freedom wherever it sought to flourish.

Editorial Reviews

MARCH 2013 - AudioFile

This highly detailed account of the lives of six prominent architects of American foreign policy in the Cold War era offers an illuminating perspective on many important decisions from Lend-Lease to the hydrogen bomb. The six protagonists embody “the Establishment” in an era when the phrase had real meaning. They formed part of a network of men with similar values and backgrounds who truly did shape the world. The book, first published in 1986, lacks the perspective of a post-Cold War world and, perhaps, revelations from Russian archives opened in the 1990s. Narrator Jonathan Reese does a workmanlike job of conveying an enormous amount of information with interest. Reese seems completely at home with the language of the Cold War. F.C. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

San Francisco Chronicle

Isaacson and Thomas have fashioned a Cold War Plutarch.

The Boston Globe

A wealth of new information and insights on the people and events that shaped the first four decades of the Cold War.

Robert A. Caro

Must be read if we are to understand the postwar world.

New York Times Book Review

A richly textured account of a class and of a historical period.

San Francisco Chronicle

Isaacson and Thomas have fashioned a Cold War Plutarch.

MARCH 2013 - AudioFile

This highly detailed account of the lives of six prominent architects of American foreign policy in the Cold War era offers an illuminating perspective on many important decisions from Lend-Lease to the hydrogen bomb. The six protagonists embody “the Establishment” in an era when the phrase had real meaning. They formed part of a network of men with similar values and backgrounds who truly did shape the world. The book, first published in 1986, lacks the perspective of a post-Cold War world and, perhaps, revelations from Russian archives opened in the 1990s. Narrator Jonathan Reese does a workmanlike job of conveying an enormous amount of information with interest. Reese seems completely at home with the language of the Cold War. F.C. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169262407
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/29/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	670,383

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