The CHAIRMAN: JOHN J MCCLOY & THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT [Hardcover]

Kai Bird (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1992

The first complete biography of the ultimate self-made American aristocrat, John J. McCloy--the poor boy who climbed the heights of Wall Street, counseled presidents, and reached the very citadel of diplomacy and business. Bird brings energy and intelligence to the examination of McCloy's life, a tale of ambition and accomplishment.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

McCloy began life in Philadelphia, literally on the wrong side of the tracks. He died in 1989, an honored, seemingly ubiquitous elder statesman of the establishment. Along the way he served corporate America as a Wall Street lawyer, guided the World Bank through its early days, and chaired Chase Manhattan Bank at its peak. As an assistant secretary of war during World War II he participated in the decision to intern Japanese Americans. As high commissioner of occupied Germany in the 1950s, McCloy played a major role in the postwar recovery of Europe. Later, he helped John Kennedy negotiate an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis and served on the Warren Commission. Bird's lively account is both the first complete treatment of this remarkable career and a valuable insight into the workings of the American elite. Recommended for all general collections.
- James R. Kuhlman, Univ. of Alabama Lib., Tuscaloosa
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

In a 1962 spoof for Esquire, Richard Rovere quoted John Kenneth Galbraith as deeming John J. McCloy ``chairman of the US Establishment''--but McCloy has never been the subject of a full- dress biography. Here, Bird (a contributing editor of The Nation) fills this void with an evenhanded and wonderfully readable account of the public man that also sheds light on the meritocracy whose dedication to principles beyond partisanship still gives it incalculable influence over a presumptively democratic polity. An ambitious, industrious overachiever who made his way from the wrong side of the tracks in Philadelphia through Amherst and Harvard Law School to international eminence, McCloy was notable more for analytic acuity than great brilliance. The upwardly mobile attorney nonetheless left his mark wherever he went. During WW II, for example, the globe-trotting McCloy was Henry Stimson's top aide at the War Department. He later headed the World Bank during its formative years and was High Commissioner of occupied Germany, moving on to the chairmanship of Chase Manhattan. Though a staunch Republican, he served as an advisor to JFK, LBJ, and their successors, while remaining a leading light of the Council on Foreign Relations--an establishment citadel if ever there was one. Although a pillar of rectitude, the pragmatic McCloy did not eschew expedients. He played a key role in the internment of Japanese- Americans after Pearl Harbor, for instance, and granted clemency to scores of convicted Nazis during his tenure in Berlin. When he died early in 1989, a few weeks short of 94, however, McCloy was fittingly eulogized for his substantive contributions to the public good. An impressive narrative history that records a consequential individual's shortcomings without tarnishing his accomplishments. Despite a paucity of personal detail, the absorbing text (ten years in preparation) will likely be the definitive life story for decades to come. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 800 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (April 30, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671454153
• ISBN-13: 978-0671454159
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #828,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kai Bird's most recent book is a memoir about the Middle East entitled Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Scribner, April 27, 2010). It is a 2011 Finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. He is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Duff Cooper Prize for History in London. He wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). He is also co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima\'s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998). He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation's Study Center, Bellagio, Italy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a contributing editor of The Nation. He lives in Kathmandu, Nepal with his wife and son.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern Europe Decoded, July 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The CHAIRMAN: JOHN J MCCLOY & THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT (Hardcover)

As a lawyer, it's gratifying to see that a fellow lawyer, John McCloy, had such a key role in putting together post-WW II Europe, and it challenges my anti-FDR leanings to read this book, since McCloy was mainly a tool of FDR. Even though he was a Republican. Mr. Bird chronicles McCloy's life starting from humble New York beginnings, and establishes that you must understand the New York investment houses, the law firms they fed and controlled, and the European investments of those New Yorkers, to understand Mc Cloy. By the end of the book, we do.

Bird has the gift of not saying too much, but telling you a lot. McCloy's dad dies, then his mom (hairdresser to the rich) keeps him in contact with Rockefellers and the like, and thru lots of hard work and sacrifice, she sees that John makes it into the exclusive schools with the same upper-crust people. He then becomes a lawyer, and does the dirty work for the unscrupulous bond salesmen who use the public's unsecured money to pay back the priority lenders to doomed projects, mainly railroads, before those same creditors send in the lawyers to repo the assets, and sell them to contolled companies which sell them again. This is all pre-New Deal, pre-SEC. Mc Cloy gets good at it and his skill at tennis leads him to play hard-ball on the tennis courts, as well as in the law courts, with big money NY types, which makes McCloy attractive to the law firms feeding off of the investment houses. At this point, a useful companion book to read would be Robert Sobel's history of the Dillon, Read investment house, which goes into more detail.

McCloy ends up being detailed to the federal gov't during WW I and becomes an intelligence expert, and then has a key part in forming what becomes the CIA. He stays connected with the CIA for the rest of his life, while pinging and ponging out of the gov't, mainly on "commissions" and "panels" and he also gets tied up with the Council on Foreign Relations, which Bird convincingly describes as very powerful in its day.

McCloy's career peaks when FDR appoints him to be high commissioner for post-WW II Germany, with plenary, Caesar-like powers, which McCloy exercises tactfully and with restraint. While also playing lots of tennis. This section of the book is very gripping, as Bird unwinds the CIA's role in funding anti-Soviet left-wing intellectuals to counter Soviet propaganda, and to make sure Germany does not intrepidly rush to unify too soon--before the die-hard old Nazi's of Germany's industrial establishment are neutralized by the passage of a generation.

The European Community is also convincingly penetrated, below the acronyms and meetings which symbolize it for most contemporary students. Bird details how McCloy dealt with the treaties forming the EC, and how insuring Germany's non-reunification fit with putting other countries intot he coal and steel industries which Germany would need to becomea credible threat again.

In this reading, the awfulness of Germany, and the threat of revanchement, is what drove the cold war, not just anti-Soviet inexorabilities of history. In leading the effort at such a key time, McCloy's sportsmanship, learning, connections, and toughness were all needed. Bird suggests where and how McCloy developed each of these qualities, and how the old "Establishment" in America operated through these high quality servants of the amassed wealth of the Eastern types who then utilized WW II to launch America as the ruler of the economic world for the next 50 years. Quite an achievement, considering they could have just sat around Bar Harbor instead, wasting the talents of the acolyte class of McCloys on sailboat lessons and hair-do's for their wives and children.

Leaving us with the issue of what type of Americans will be called on to get us through whatever convulsions are left, now that George H.W. Bush and James Baker III steered us through the definitive collapse of Russian Communism. In this light, should we be glad or sad that the Arkansas contingent looks like they will miss the coming convulsion of Chinese communism?

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book for history buffs!, January 15, 2001

By 

Auren Hoffman (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The CHAIRMAN: JOHN J MCCLOY & THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT (Hardcover)

Ever wonder who was the chair of the "establishment" for a good part of the 20th Century. It was clearly John McCloy. Here's a short bio: grew up poor; graduated from Harvard Law School; became a partner at Cravath; was Under-Secretary of Defense (under Stimson) for FDR -- basically the number two guy (and the go-to-guy) in the War Department in WWII; was behind many good and bad decisions like internment of the Japanese (supported) and dropping of the atom bomb (opposed); became the allied ruler of Germany after the war (and was responsible for the democratization of the country); Chairman of the World Bank; Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations; Chairman and CEO of Chase; Chair of President's Disarmament Committee; helped negotiate the Cuban Missile Crisis; served on the Warren Commission; knew every President personally from FDR to Bush. He is a complicated person who made many good and bad decisions -- Read this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Bedtime Story for =Adults= Only, September 27, 2011

By 

Rodger Garrett "SighKoBlahGrr" (Loma Linda, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The CHAIRMAN: JOHN J MCCLOY & THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT (Hardcover)

The plot thickens. And thickens. And thickens. Even if allowed room for improvisation, the players must come to the resolution of the drama. The players have no other choice. They must follow one of only two stipulated scripts: the "right" one or the "wrong" one.

Drama has rules: there are good guys, bad guys and victims. Those who live by the drama must die by it. In time, however, the plot may become so thick that the whole thing simply caves in. The players may lose the thread. The audience, however, goes home to bed.

John McCloy was one of the best "players" ever. I do not mean that he was a "good" or "bad" man. I do not mean that he was "right" or "wrong." I simply suggest that a careful read of =The Chairman= from a point of view other than from inside the geopolitical box -- or down on that game board (c) Fox & MSNBC -- will teach one who aspires to be a Player at least some of what a Player must know.

Rule No. 1: In the Big game, there are no absolutes. There are no airtight moral principles. There are no ironclad ethics. There is only what works to keep the game going. To keep the bombs from falling. To send the audience home to a nice warm bed.

Rule No. 2: Idealism is nice over cocktails, but money talks.

Rule No. 3: There are no should's, ought's, musts or have-to's in the Big game. There's only money, guns and bombs.

Most people have convictions. Some have convictions about "right" and "wrong." Others have convictions about getting what they want. Most can only see "all" or "nothing." McCloy could see the spaces in between. One may not care for "in between," of course. "Moral relativism" doesn't play well on cable news.

But it =is= how the world works when the push of 300 divisions of red troops face down 500 blue warheads.

Jack up the block, Joe out on the dock, the op-ed editor and the TV talking parrot tell us it can all be wrapped up neatly and served with A-1 Sauce after the third act. But a play is a play, and the real world is not.

McCloy understood. He went for the 75-25 when he thought he could get it. Much of the time, 51-49 was the best he could do. He and the rest of power seekers made -- and will continue to make -- mistakes because of the power and 20-20 hindsight they don't really have. The Shah of Iran lived a few blocks from me in Indian Wells, California. He understood that.

99% of the people in the world will never face anything remotely like what the Big players face. In a world of "democracies" full of mental infants, I'm truly thankful for that.