Kissinger 1923-1968 - The Idealist – Ferguson Niall

No American statesman has been as revered and reviled as Henry Kissinger. Hailed by some as the “indispensable man”, whose advice was sought by every president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, Kissinger was also fiercely condemned by critics who portrayed him as an amoral Machiavellian and the ultimate cold-blooded “realist”. In this remarkable first volume of a two-volume biography, Niall Ferguson creates an extraordinary panorama of Kissinger’s world and offers a radically new assessment of the man. Understanding Kissinger’s early life—as a Jewish boy in Hitler’s Germany, a poor immigrant in New York, a GI at the Battle of the Bulge, an interrogator of Nazis and a student of history at Harvard—reveals his debt to the philosophy of idealism. Tracing his rise, fall and revival as an adviser to John F. Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller and finally Richard Nixon also illuminates the scale of his contribution to the theory of diplomacy, grand strategy and nuclear deterrence. Drawing on Kissinger’s previously closed private papers and documents from more than a hundred archives worldwide, this biography sheds new light on an entire era.