Summertime is the time to read Big Fat Books and at 784 pages, George F. Kennan certainly qualifies. George Kennan served in the State Department as an expert on the Soviet Union and was the architect of the “containment” strategy. It took decades, but Kennan’s containment strategy avoided a nuclear war and did ultimately bring down the Soviet Union. John Lewis Gaddis presents a complete picture of Kennan’s life from his early life in Wisconsin to Kennan’s later years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. If you’re interested in one of the most important diplomats in American history, George F. Kennan is a magisterial biography: it won the National Book Critics Circle Best Biography Award. GRADE: A
I commend you, George, but that is not my idea of light summer reading.
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A long political biography of brilliant strategist was exactly what I hankered for, Jeff. Kennan’s life made for interesting reading. And Gaddis’s book has won several, well-deserved awards.
I might have to read it to see how little I agree that anything the US did really brought down the USSR…the internal problems they didn’t choose to address smacked them around much as the ones our gummints don’t choose to address are collapsing our life-way, or easily could. I foresee China’s fascism not really working out so very well in the medium run, either, but as with India, so many human resources at hand give one some leeway to play around…till all those resources start forcefully reminding you that they are currently very hungry, and what do you intend to do about that?
The times are always interesting.
Kennan grasped the dynamic of the Soviet Union, Todd. He was right about most of his strategic recommendations.
I think I am with Todd on this one other than the strain on their budget. Chernobyl, Afghanistan, the times perhaps more than the U.S. But who am I to say since I haven’t read the book.
Kennan believed we could avoid a nuclear war with the Soviet Union if we could contain their system until it collapsed naturally, Patti.