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The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made Paperback – June 4, 2013

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Walter Isaacson (Author)
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Walter Isaacson (Author),
Evan Thomas (Author)
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Evan Thomas (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 102 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 864 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reissue edition (June 4, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1476728828
  • ISBN-13: 978-1476728827
  • Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,646 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsWisdom Then
By Mark S. Kucinic on January 16, 2007
Format: Paperback
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.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Reminder...
By Gio on July 10, 2008
Format: Paperback
... of a ten-year-old book that shouldn't be forgotten, the "biography" of American foreign policy from the Truman years to the apotheosis of Reagan. Like most biographies, this one concentrates on the childhood of the Cold War containment/exhaustion strategy, the DNA so to speak of neo-conservatism, born of a Democratic mother and a Republican father. Any reader of my other reviews, who doubts my assertion that Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Bush were mere inheritors of a foreign policy as rigidly sustained as if by primogeniture, should take on this book as ferociously as you dare.

The six Wise Men -- McCloy, Bohlen, Acheson, Lovett, Harriman, and Kennan -- would be the last to blush at being identified as "The Greatest Generation" or "The Best and the Brightest." Their egos and their sense of elite entitlement to lead are central to their story. This is a deeper portrait of their intellectual mode than either of those two just-mentioned best-sellers. Authors Isaacson and Thomas are clearly of the same "old school" as their subjects. Their admiration is in a sense self-adulation; even when the Wise Men acknowledged errors, the very nature of their errors turned out to reflect wisdom. My own admiration for the six is considerably more limited, but it's hard to deny the authors' thesis that these Yale and Harvard whiz-kids and their colleagues were the movers-and-shakers of administration after administration. Even as some of them lost a portion of their self-assurance in light of the massive failure in Vietnam, they continued to limn the hegemonist, exceptionalist conception of America which has continued to fail up to the current massive failure in Iraq. Given that all six were perceived as "liberals" aligned with Democratic administrations, some partisans of the other party may come to this book with an established antipathy toward its subjects. All I can say to that is "read it and learn!"
17 Comments 61 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsExhaustive (exhausting), and fascinating
By A Customer on July 30, 1999
Format: Paperback
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.
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4.0 out of 5 starsanother reader
By R. Hallberg on March 17, 2006
Format: Paperback
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Hubby loved it!

Published 1 month ago by bella2
5.0 out of 5 starsDifferent Times, Familiar Places

This is a presentation of the behind-the-scenes movers and shapers of history that will seem nostalgic given today's popular anger and frustration with government leadership. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Matt Mansfield
5.0 out of 5 starsThis was one of those books I picked up and ...

This was one of those books I picked up and couldn't put down. It's based on an era and a set of circumstances that are just plain different than today's world

Published 2 months ago by Robert Manninen
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

It is something that high school's history class should read.

Published 2 months ago by shannon
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very good reading!!

Published 2 months ago by Loren L Hanel
5.0 out of 5 starsA genteel perspective on a more halcyon time

An establishment built by self-assured and sacrificial men, while not perfect, provided a much clearer headed direction than today's offering.

Published 3 months ago by KindleFirestormer
5.0 out of 5 starsWe Need Wise Men Today

This is a very large book. The authors are excellent, the subjects are interesting. Did you ever wonder how WWII was won and how the ruined, shattered, and hungry were handled... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Cynthia R. Peterson
4.0 out of 5 starsA well written book about the service of mainstream people ...

A well written book about the service of mainstream people post WW2. An interesting tale of service ....how have we gone so far afield today ???

Published 4 months ago by tibby
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Great history of 20th century diplomacy and the men who served for so many years.

Published 5 months ago by Jeep61
4.0 out of 5 starsHow Foreign Policy Was Made

Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas do a great job profiling the six foreign policy protagonists of the story. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Rob

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