The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (Paperback)

by Walter Isaacson (Author), Evan Thomas (Author) "As he stood on the dock of the brown-shingled boathouse, Averell Harriman paid little notice to the spindly boy rowing in seat seven of the..." (more)
Key Phrases: oral history seminar, atomic control, pretty good club, State Department, New York, White House (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This extensive group-portrait by two Time news editors trumpets the role of six policymakersDean Acheson, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, John McCloy Jr., Charles Bohlen, Robert Lovettin taking postWW II America from isolationism to a recognition that the U.S. "would have to assume the burden of a global role." The irony is that, as elder statesmen, they sometimes warned against the interventionist momentum they had helped create, as this behind-the-scenes account makes clear. The authors' portrayal of the six as the hidden architects behind the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and Cold War containment will certainly provoke debate. Based on prodigious research, including interviews with four of the six, the tome often sounds like an official biography ("Kennan had tortuously conflicted feelings about being tapped to be part of the American elite") and the prose echoes Time's style (Dean Rusk, "the round-faced Georgian"). History buffs will follow with interest the minor revelations that spill forth as the six advise presidents from F. D. R. to L. B. J. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
The authors, Time editors, chronicle the activities of six gifted friendsDean Acheson, Charles E. Bohlen, W. Averell Harriman, George Kennan, Robert Lovett, and John J. McCloywho were instrumental in developing U.S. diplomacy from the 1930s to the Vietnam War. Nurtured in the innocent internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, they applied their Ivy League educations to a variety of crises. Their successes outweighed their failures, and their service promoted the values of free trade, democratic capitalism, international cooperation, and pragmatism. Their lives provide a history of America's policy-making elite. But elitism breeds insularity, and the shift away from great wars between industrialized nations and toward small unit actions in wars of national liberation was not recognized by these men. Though superbly written, this book's primary value is anecdotal. James L . Jablonowski, History Dept., Marquette Univ., Milwaukee
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 4, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684837714
• ISBN-13: 978-0684837710
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #12,612 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wisdom Then, January 16, 2007

By	Mark S. Kucinic "The Kooch" (Roseville, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In a 1996 interview with David Gergen on NPR, one of this book's central characters makes a case for, what I will hazard to suggest, is one of the authors' central views;

DAVID GERGEN: Let me ask you this in terms of thinking back over then of that period of American foreign policy in the last forty or fifty years, one of the ironies here is that in an age of information you suggest we have too little wisdom.
GEORGE KENNAN: Yes, I do, and one of the things that bothers me about the computer culture of the present age is that one of the things of which it seems to me we have the least need is further information. What we really need is intelligent guidance in what to do with the information we've got.

Thus The Wise Men becomes a paean to, as the authors' admit at the outset, "the twentieth-century tradition of an informal brain trust of internationalists who first served Woodrow Wilson at Versailles and returned home to found the Council on Foreign Relations, " establishing along the way, "a distinguished network connecting Wall Street, Washington, worthy foundations, and proper clubs." The polemics about where one finds wisdom aside, The Wise Men provides a fascinating and uncompromising study of the evolution of U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union from the establishment of formal relations during the Roosevelt administration to Vietnam from the perspective of six of it's most significant players; Dean Acheson, Charles "Chip" Bohlen, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, Robert Lovett and John McCloy with side trips into electoral politics and the Middle East. Although I found the authors' fascination with many of these individuals' membership in Harvard's elite Porcellian and Yale's Skull and Bones clubs a bit off-putting (to say nothing of the not-so-veiled apologia for a certain social elitism . . . call me a populist), it would be difficult to find six more pivotal characters. The arguably lesser stars make significant appearances, most notably the Alsop and Bundy brothers, Clark Clifford, James Forrestal and Paul Nitze. I will even forgive the authors' treatment of one of my heroes', George Kennan's, emotional shortcomings. For those of a certain ideological bent, John Foster Dulles and Dean Rusk are not treated sympathetically. It all rings true notwithstanding and The Wise Men makes an excellent post-war study of U.S. foreign policy particularly as a counterpoint to David Halberstam's "Best and the Brightest" for those too busy or cheap to subscribe to Foreign Affairs.

36 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exhaustive (exhausting), and fascinating, July 30, 1999

By A Customer

This book is fantastically interesting. The detail and the descriptions of personalities involved make the subject matter more than palatable, even to the less scholarly among us. The book is, however, very, very long and would have perhaps been better broken up into several volumes. I would characterize it as very well written, exhaustively researched, slightly fawning and uncritical at times, and, in general, well worth lugging around.

24 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars another reader, March 17, 2006

By	R. Hallberg - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A very interesting book, but you have to be able to read between
the lines. Isaacson paints a picture of six powerful men who did
everything they could for US and mankind in general.
Another reviewer used the words fawning and uncritical to
describe the book. Well, there is a good reason for that.
Walter Isaacson, head of Aspen Institute, is himself a member
of the same "Insider Establishment" as the six men in
the book.
For kissing up, he has also been made a member of the
powerful Council on Foreign Relations.
This book should be combined with other more critical or
even negative writings on the subject to help build a more
realistic view.
For example I recommend books by the late Anthony Sutton.

Averell Harriman was a particularly unsavoury character, a
notorious Bilderberger, whose nefarious machinations are
becoming more and more known to the public, even
though still much is suppressed by the media.

Some people I have talked to think that the book should be called "the Wise Guys" instead of "the Wise Men" , but personally I wouldn't go that far.
The world isn't just black and white after all. These guys
looked after their own like everybody else on the planet and maybe, just maybe, in the meantime something good came out of it.