George Kennan
Subtitle: a writing life
By: Lee Congdon.
Publisher: ISI Books
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Wilmington, Del
Language: eng
Number of pages: 219
ISBN-13: 9781933859712
Subjects: Kennan, George F. -- 1904-2005; Politics and war -- Philosophy; Historians -- United States -- Biography; Ambassadors -- United States -- Biography; United States -- Foreign relations -- Philosophy
Genres: Biography
Description: There were two George F. Kennans. The first was the well-known diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia-a tough political realist and man of the world who gained fame as the theorist of America's Cold War "containment" strategy. This was a "persona" that Kennan adopted in order to carry out his professional responsibilities. The second, largely unknown, but real George Kennan was a writer and aesthete-a shy, lonely man who felt alienated from both his country and his times, and a man who made major contributions to American literature. Thus argues Lee Congdon in George Kennan: A Writing Life, a groundbreaking study of Kennan's life and thought. Congdon narrates Kennan's legendary work in the foreign service, his later career as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, and the schools of thought to which he made significant contributions: political realism, antidemocratic social and political criticism, Spenglerian gloom, and conservative cultural analysis. Congdon concludes that notwithstanding his great accomplishments as a diplomat and geopolitical strategist, Kennan merits consideration above all else as an original and penetrating American writer.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-208) and index.