Landmark Kennan Biography Chronicles Complex Life of Early Cold Warrior
Official biographer John Lewis Gaddis paints a fascinating and multidimensional portrait of George Kennan, the post-war diplomat who set forth containment doctrine, presaged the collapse of the Soviet Union, and, in later years, became an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy, including of the war in Vietnam. At the launch Wednesday of George F. Kennan: An American Life, Gaddis revealed the personality behind one of the 20th century’s great policy minds.
Overview
Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his personal papers, John Lewis Gaddis, former Wilson Center fellow and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University, will discuss his latest book, George F. Kennan: An American Life , which delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind.
In the late 1940s, George Kennan wrote two documents, the "Long Telegram" and the "X Article," which outlined the strategy of containment that would define U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next four decades. This achievement alone would qualify him as the most influential American diplomat of the Cold War era. But he was also an architect of the Marshall Plan, a prizewinning historian, and would become one of the most outspoken critics of American diplomacy, politics, and culture during the last half of the twentieth century. Now the full scope of Kennan's long life and vast influence is revealed by one of today's most important Cold War scholars.
Gaddis began this magisterial history almost thirty years ago, interviewing Kennan frequently and gaining complete access to his voluminous diaries and other personal papers. So frank and detailed were these materials that Kennan and Gaddis agreed that the book would not appear until after Kennan's death.
We see Kennan's insecurity as a Midwesterner among elites at Princeton, his budding dissatisfaction with authority and the status quo, his struggles with depression, his gift for satire, and his sharp insights on the policies and people he encountered. Kennan turned these sharp analytical gifts upon himself, even to the point of regularly recording dreams. The result is a revealing view of how this greatest of Cold War strategists came to doubt his strategy and always doubted himself.
The Honorable Jane Harman, Director, President and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Center will provide introductory remarks.
George F. Kennan: An American Life was selected by The New York Times Book Review as Notable Book of the Year.
Visit The New York Times website to read a review of the book.
Purchase the book at Penguingroup.com
Speakers
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Cold War International History Project
The Cold War International History Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. Through an award winning Digital Archive, the Project allows scholars, journalists, students, and the interested public to reassess the Cold War and its many contemporary legacies. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. Read more
Kennan Institute
The Kennan Institute is the premier US center for advanced research on Eurasia and the oldest and largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Kennan Institute is committed to improving American understanding of Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and the surrounding region though research and exchange. Read more
History and Public Policy Program
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The Global Europe Program is focused on Europe’s capabilities, and how it engages on critical global issues. We investigate European approaches to critical global issues. We examine Europe’s relations with Russia and Eurasia, China and the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Our initiatives include “Ukraine in Europe” – an examination of what it will take to make Ukraine’s European future a reality. But we also examine the role of NATO, the European Union and the OSCE, Europe’s energy security, transatlantic trade disputes, and challenges to democracy. The Global Europe Program’s staff, scholars-in-residence, and Global Fellows participate in seminars, policy study groups, and international conferences to provide analytical recommendations to policy makers and the media. Read more
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