Title: George Kennan
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.
Subjects: Politics and war, Biography, Historians, Ambassadors, Philosophy, Foreign relations, Historians, biography, Historians, united states, United states, foreign relations, Kennan, george f. (george frost), 1904-2005