Cool, lucid account of the later years of a towering cold-war
figure; by Brinkley (History/Hofstra Univ.). Dean Acheson had two
careers: one a nearly seamless ascent (Groton, Yale, Navy, Harvard
Law) to secretary of state under Truman; the other, beginning with
a testy 50's interregnum as gadfly to the Republican Party, is
Brinkley's subject. Bedeviled by McCarthyist charges that he had
"lost China" and was soft on Communism, Acheson emerged a different
and puzzling man, a bellicose adviser to several Presidents he had
previously scorned, and dangerously acerbic. Acheson, said Chester
Bowles in 1963, "likes not only to disagree with people, but to
destroy them if he can." Brinkley reveals the furies unleashed in
this determined anti-Communist by right-wing attacks, showing
Acheson's evolution into a power-player whom men like Robert
Kennedy and Dean Rusk saw as "heedless and unrelenting...deformed
in the crucible of McCarthyism." The author balances history and
biography expertly, maintaining clear focus on Acheson's analysis
of events and his complex personal interplay with the statesmen of
his time. A superhawk on Vietnam, Acheson managed to work with the
cautious JFK not only because Acheson was a loyal Democrat and
consummate professional but also, as is clear throughout, because
of his need to be close to power. Though perceived by Kennedy as
"an old man from another era," Acheson became a valued adviser from
the Berlin Wall and Cuban missile crises through the events in
Cyprus and Vietnam, but particularly in Europe, where he shored up
relations with de Gaulle, Adenauer, and others. Acheson performed
similar services for LBJ and, amazingly, for his old enemy Nixon,
provoking Acheson's wife to regret that "her husband had fallen
prey to a campaign of flattery waged by Nixon and Kissinger." Even
Acheson, for all his crustiness, would have respected the clear,
concise writing and objectivity of this fine political biography.
(Kirkus Reviews)
DEAN ACHESON is best remembered as President Harry Truman's
powerful secretary of state, the American father of NATO, and a
major architect of U.S. foreign policy in the decade following the
Second World War. But Acheson also played a major role in politics
and foreign affairs after his tenure in the Truman administration,
as an important Democratic Party activist and theorist during the
Eisenhower presidency and as a valued adviser during the Kennedy,
Johnson, and Nixon administrations. This engrossing book, the first
to chronicle Acheson's postsecretarial career, paints a portrait of
a brilliant, irascible, and powerful man acting during a turbulent
period in American history. Drawing on the recently opened Acheson
papers as well as on interviews with Acheson's family and with
leading public figures of the era, Douglas Brinkley tells an
intriguing tale that is part biography, part diplomatic history,
and part politics. Brinkley considers Acheson's role in numerous
NATO-related debates and task forces, the Berlin and Cuban missile
crises, Vietnam War decision-making, the Cyprus dispute of 1964,
the anti-de Gaulle initiative of the 1960s, and U.S.-African
policy. He describes Acheson as a staunch anticommunist with a
persistent Eurocentric focus, a man who was intolerant of American
leaders such as George Kennan, J. William Fulbright, and Walter
Lippmann for opposing his views, and who often feuded with JFK,
LBJ, Robert McNamara, and Dean Rusk. Finally, angered at the
activities of anti-Vietnam War liberal Democrats, Acheson found
himself in 1969 serving as one of Nixon's most important unofficial
foreign policy advisers. Throughout this time, Acheson stayed in
the public eye, helped bythe six books he wrote after he left
office (including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Present at the
Creation), his television appearances, lectures, testimony before
Congress, and correspondence with European statesmen. Brinkley's
book illuminates Acheson as elder statesman and reveals how a
unique individual was able to influence policy-making and public
opinion without the official trappings of office.
General
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