Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist Paperback – September 27, 2016

This is one of the best biographies of any public figure I've read; no surprise because it is by Niall Ferguson. I've spent much of my career as an academic and as a foreign policy official in the executive and legislative branches, and Kissinger has loomed large for my teaching, research and practice. I have always known there was more to him than the caricature of "Bismarckian" or "Machiavellian" because I've read him and studied him from his early years forward. But Ferguson does a superb job in one book of explaining why Kissinger is a complex figure with as much of an idealist and philosophical grounding as a realist one. Kissinger's birth and early years shaped him, along with his studies of political philosophy, especially regarding human rights and the liberty ideas. As a practitioner responsible for national security and the US role in great power politics, of course he will be perceived as more of a realist. But his motivations for protecting the US and her allies, his impulse to care deeply about his adopted home that gave him freedom and opportunity as an individual imbued with rights, are all on display here. Fault him for incidents, fault him for policies you don't agree with, but to paint him as a callous Borgia with no concern for liberty, rights and the American Founders' ethos is ignorance or simply a calumny. If anything can correct that false understanding of him, Ferguson's biography should be able to for any open minded reader.

“For this reason, I can predict with certainty that hostile reviewers will allege that I have in some way been influenced or induced to paint a falsely flattering picture.’’So true.“My sole commitment was to make my “best efforts to record [his] life ‘as it actually was’ on the basis of an informed study of the documentary and other evidence available.”“This commitment was part of a legal agreement, which ended with the following clause . . .“While the authority of the Work will be enhanced by the extent of the Grantor’s [i.e., Kissinger’s] assistance . . . it will be enhanced still more by the fact of the Author’s independence; thus, it is understood and agreed that . . . the Author shall have full editorial control over the final manuscript of the Work, and the Grantor shall have no right to vet, edit, amend or prevent the publication of the finished manuscript of the Work.’’And (I think) Ferguson reached that goal. No biographer can deeply see into a life and be blinded by hostile prejudice; on the other-hand, preconceived assumptions can warp his vision. The right balance requires genuine skill.Most of this extensive work (864 pages) is historical narrative. Ferguson is writing, in reality, two biographies. One, biography of a famous public intellectual; and two, the biography of twentieth century politics. In fact, seems to spend more pages on cultural, political, academic, military context — than Kissinger’s story.Great! (If you want that much detail)Students of political science, scholars looking for comprehensive references, curious readers looking for ‘inside story’, etc., etc., will all be satisfied. For general reader wanting overview . . .Nevertheless, Ferguson includes analysis, opinion, conclusions and insights. For example, in epilogue . . .“It was an education in five stages . . .The first was Kissinger’s youthful experience of German tyranny, American democracy, and world war.The second was his discovery of philosophical idealism and then historical knowledge at Harvard, and his first application in “Boswash” of these academic insights in the new field of nuclear strategy.The third stage was the harsh lesson in political reality he received in Washington, D.C., during the giddy, risky years of the Kennedy administration.Then came the exposure, from the ground up, to the new kind of warfare that was being waged in Vietnam.Finally, in Paris, Kissinger learned what it was to be diplomatically hoodwinked.’’This provides outstanding summary. Then . . .“At all but the last stage of his educational progress, there was a mentor: first, Fritz Kraemer, the monocled Mephistopheles in olive-green fatigues; then William Elliott, Dixie’s Oxonian idealist; then McGeorge Bundy, the WASP in the White House; then Nelson Rockefeller, a would-be Medici to Kissinger’s anti-Machiavelli, as naïve in his pursuit of power as Kissinger was idealistic in his counsel.’’As shown above, Ferguson’s deft sketch of many famous people adds color and interest. Many, many more — Kennedys, Johnson, Haig, Adenauer, MacGeorge Bundy, de Gaulle, Dulles, Rostow, Eisenhower, W. Y. Elliott, Ho Chi Minh, Kennan, Khrushchev, H. C. Lodge, McNamara, Nixon, etc., etc., — these are just the ones with numerous references!Some real . . . real . . . revelations . . .CHAPTER 1 HeimatCHAPTER 2 EscapeCHAPTER 3 Fürth on the HudsonCHAPTER 4 An Unexpected PrivateCHAPTER 5 The Living and the DeadCHAPTER 6 In the Ruins of the ReichCHAPTER 7 The IdealistCHAPTER 8 Psychological WarfareCHAPTER 9 Doctor KissingerCHAPTER 10 Strangelove?CHAPTER 11 BoswashCHAPTER 12 The Intellectual and the Policy MakerCHAPTER 13 Flexible ResponsesCHAPTER 14 Facts of LifeCHAPTER 15 CrisisCHAPTER 16 The Road to VietnamCHAPTER 17 The Unquiet AmericanCHAPTER 18 Dirt Against the WindCHAPTER 19 The Anti-BismarckCHAPTER 20 Waiting for HanoiCHAPTER 21 1968CHAPTER 22 The Unlikely CombinationEPILOGUE: A BildungsromanWhat surprised (astounded) me the most was Kissinger’s doctoral thesis . . .“The Meaning of History” has gone down in history—as the longest-ever thesis written by a Harvard senior and the origin of the current limit on length (35,000 words, or around 140 pages, still known to some as “the Kissinger rule”). The thesis was 388 pages long—and this was after chapters on Hegel and Schweitzer had been cut. But its size was not the most remarkable thing about it.’’Really?“In a dazzling distillation of three years’ worth of reading, Kissinger gives us not just Spengler, Toynbee, and Kant but also Collingwood, Dante, Darwin, Descartes, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Hegel, Hobbes, Holmes, Homer, Hume, Locke, Milton, Plato, Sartre, Schweitzer, Spinoza, Tolstoy, Vico, Virgil, and Whitehead—as well as Bradley, Huntington, Joseph, Poincaré, Reichenbach, Royce, Russell, Sheffer, Stebbing, and Veblen in the appendix on the logic of meaning.’’Wow! Professional philosophers would be proud to complete this . . . this . . . overwhelming dive into the depths . . . For a political science student? What does Kissinger conclude?“The experience of freedom in a determined environment is [thus] seen to be potentially meaningful after all. . . . Purposiveness is not revealed by phenomenal reality but constitutes the resolve of a soul. Freedom does have a place in a determined universe.”This decision against determinism and for freedom is rare. How did he defend this?“Where does Kissinger himself stand in the end? The answer is with freedom over necessity, with choice understood as an inward experience . . .“Freedom,” he writes in a key passage, “is not a definitional quality, but an inner experience of life as a process of deciding meaningful alternatives. This . . . does not mean unlimited choice. Everybody is a product of an age, a nation, and environment. But, beyond that, he constitutes what is essentially unapproachable by analysis . . . the creative essence of history, the moral personality. However we may explain actions in retrospect, their accomplishment occurred with the inner conviction of choice. . . . Man can find the sanction for his actions only within himself.’’Well . . . no one can claim Kissinger was superficial . . .A lot of stuff in Ferguson’s book. Reader can skip a lot (I did) and still find much to absorb.Sixty seven photographsExtensive index (linked)Thousands of notes (linked)Five hundred sources (not linked)Tremendous research!

This is a stunningly good biography of Henry Kissinger's rise. The book attempts to show that Kissinger was much more idealistic when he was younger, although he became a solid political realist later in life. There is some truth in this, although very few Americans are completely pure realists, and Kissinger's Harvard dissertation certainly showed a solid understanding of the utility of realism.The aspect of the book that I find absolutely mesmerizing is the discussion of how Kissinger advanced his career. As a Harvard Ph.D. with a background in the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna, he seemed destined for a comfortable but hardly stellar career. Despite his improbable start, he became a foreign policy superstar partially through hard work and a first class mind. He also worked diligently to establish important connections and avoid getting bogged down in meaningless academic or government drudgery. As a young scholar, and then later in life, he cultivated and maintained an incredible number of important contacts ranging from Arthur Schlessinger to Nelson Rockefeller. Kissinger also continuously remade himself into an expert on issues at the forefront of U.S. policy concerns. He learned about nuclear weapons doctrine in great detail for his breakthrough book, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.In another application of the same strategy, he quickly managed to establish himself as a leading voice on U.S. policy toward Vietnam, despite his lack of grounding in Asian studies. Throughout this time, he sought to avoid problems with university and government bureaucracies, which he often saw as obstacles. According to Kissinger, bureaucracies always sought safe non-controversial middle ground on any issues. This tendency was reinforced by the effort for bureaucracies with overlapping responsibilities to seek truces with each other. Moreover, he maintained that such organizations often crushed even the most creative people with massive amounts of useless paperwork. Better to soar above it all, with a reputation that allows you friendly access to the media and powerful individuals as a foreign policy celebrity who eventually became one of the most well-known Americans in recent history.

Niall Ferguson has written what I feel must become a classic for all those in search of the essence of a great statesman whose works, policies and actions have affected all our lives.Indeed it could be said that Kissinger comes alive through this epic biography. I am awaiting the second volume to continue the Kissinger story up to the present day.Ferguson writes as Historian Journalist and brings together widely dispersed issues of the time in clearly expressed language worthy of his own excellent scholarship in UK, America and Europe. For those who want to know why the world is as it is today, this book would be a good starting point. In all possible respects this is an exceptional biography which should be essential reading for everyone who is interested in what created the world we live in as Pax Americana - up till now!

An brilliant book about a pretty amazing statesman.

good

Fascinating book about a fascinating man!

This needs to be read slowly and carefully as it's so brilliant. If you revel in politics and political history, this book is a joy.

Excellent

An excellent treatment of the thoughts and actions of a pivotal individual who shaped the era I grew up in.

All good and as described

Melhor biografia de Kissinger já feita, Niall Ferguson se reafirma como o maior historiador de sua geração.Trazendo maior complexidade para a figura do talvez maior diplomata da história americana, o historiador pondera, Será que o realismo não é fruto da vida real?

There are three things going for Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist (henceforth The Idealist). The first is that the author, Niall Ferguson, has a felicity with words that is rare among academics. As anyone who has read the two-volume The House of Rothschild or The Cash Nexus can attest, Ferguson survived the systematic excoriation in graduate school that transforms the Queen’s English into dense, jargon-laden, and self-absorbed prose. The Idealist, for all its impressive archival and primary source research, remains a book for the general public and is not an impenetrable tract that only a few specialists will relish...[...]

Ein ausführliches Werk; habe es immer noch nicht ganz durchgelesen. Beim Lesen des Buche liest man die gegenwärtige Außenpolitik gedanklich "nebenbei" mit. Hochaktuell vor dem Hintergrund einer sich ändernden Weltordnung ....

Detail account of the first part of the life of Henry Kissinger, but also an account of the times he lived on.How did Nazi Germany helped shape the future statesman.An important tool for understanding the history of post WWII America.

Excellent account of Kissinger and his time. Well written and well documented. Provides good understanding of the challenges facing both the political leaders as well as those intellectuals who are engaged in studying the issues.

An in depth look at Henry Kissinger's life's from childhood to National Security Adviser to the president. This book fills in the gaps left by the headlines of the day.

I found the book captivating and enjoyable. I always thought HAK an interesting fellow and Ferguson made him seem more so from my perspective. That is all I can ask of a biographer.