Niall Ferguson - Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist

Niall Ferguson

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KISSINGER

19231968: The Idealist

Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He is the author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, High Financier, Civilization and The Great Degeneration. His Kissinger, a feature-length film based on his interviews with Henry Kissinger, won the 2011 New York Film Festival prize for best documentary.

The finely nuanced portrait of Kissinger that emerges from this exhaustively detailed book is unlikely to be bettered. Yet it is more than just a biography; it is a compelling chronicle of the middle third of the twentieth century from the perspective of an extraordinary man Saul David, Evening Standard

Magnificent If the second volume is as good as the first, Kissinger will be remembered as Fergusons masterpiece With his usual meticulous research, Ferguson is master of all his work surveys. At least as important, he writes in an unobtrusive but compelling style that carries the reader along with unforced ease. Even on its own, the first volume of Fergusons life of Kissinger is a great work about a great man by it has to be admitted a great historian. It should be read, and enjoyed, by every serious student of the history of our times Sherard Cowper-Coles, Spectator

Brilliant Ferguson shows that ideas in particular the ideas of political actors with a keen sense of history and its lessons can shape our times Not every reader will share Fergusons view, but anyone interested in how we should all respond to a troubled world of uncertainty and conflict will benefit from immersing themselves in this thought-provoking and densely enjoyable biography Michael Gove, Mail on Sunday

Restores Kissingers complex humanity As an intellectual biography, Fergusons book is a splendidly rich achievement: carefully researched, judiciously argued and elegantly written Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

A formidably detailed, closely argued study of the making of one of the giants of twentieth-century foreign policy Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, Books of the Year

Niall Ferguson has chosen to tackle this topic on the grandest possible scale I acquired valuable knowledge, elegantly conveyed Paul Johnson, Standpoint Magazine

The book illustrates just what an extraordinary human being Kissinger is Robert Service, Daily Telegraph

The definitive biography Ferguson offers a remarkably rich discussion of Kissingers strategic thought and of how it took shape over time The book is well worth reading as a corrective to harsher historical judgments of Kissinger Wall Street Journal

If Kissingers official biographer cannot be accused of falling for his subjects justifiably famed charm, he certainly gives the reader enough evidence to conclude that Henry Kissinger is one of the greatest Americans in the history of the Republic, someone who has been repulsively traduced over several decades and who deserved to have defense of this comprehensiveness published years ago Niall Ferguson already has many important, scholarly and controversial books to his credit. But if the second volume of Kissinger is anywhere near as comprehensive, well written and riveting as the first, this will be his masterpiece Andrew Roberts, The New York Times

An engrossing intellectual history Simon Scott Plummer, The Tablet

When an accomplished historian writes about one of the worlds great diplomats, the results are sure to be a masterpiece and that is exactly how to describe Niall Fergusons epic on Henry Kissinger James A. Baker, III, 61st U.S. Secretary of State

This is a terrific biography, and a must-read for understanding the evolution of one of the most important and compelling architects of American foreign policy of our age Condoleezza Rice, Former Secretary of State and Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business

This is an extraordinary biography of the most significant scholar-statesman-strategist of our time, by one of our most accomplished historians. Not to be missed John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University

Fergusons biography will be a classic Robert B. Zoellick, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Former President of the World Bank, and U.S. Trade Representative

Fresh and imaginative, this carefully researched biography reads like a novel. Under Niall Fergusons skilled pen, Kissinger the public colossus becomes Henry the boy and man. A wonderful read Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and author of Is the American Century Over?

IN MEMORIAM

Gerald Harriss (19252014)

Karl Leyser (19201992)

Angus Macintyre (19351994)

Indeed I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any mans life, than not only relating all the most important events of it in their order, but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought; by which mankind are enabled as it were to see him live, and to live oer each scene with him, as he actually advanced through the several stages of his life . I will venture to say that he will be seen in this work more completely than any man who has ever yet lived. And he will be seen as he really was; for I profess to write, not his panegyrick, which must be all praise, but his Life . [I]n every picture there should be shade as well as light.

BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

The task of the biographer, as James Boswell understood, is to enable the reader to see, in her minds eye, his subject live. To achieve this, the biographer must know his subject. That means reading all that he wrote as well as much that was written about him. It also means, if the subject is living, not merely interviewing him but getting to know him, as Boswell got to know Johnson: conversing with him, supping with him, even traveling with him. The challenge is, of course, to do so without falling so much under the subjects influence that the reader ceases to believe the disclaimer that the work is a life, not a panegyric. Boswell, who grew to love Johnson, achieved this feat in two ways: by making explicit Johnsons boorish manners and slovenly appearance, but also (as Jorge Luis Borges noted) by making himself a figure of funa straight man to Johnsons wit, an overexcitable Scot to Johnsons dry Englishman. My approach has been different.

In addition to the help of all those thanked in the acknowledgments, this author has had one noteworthy advantage over his predecessors: I have had access to Henry Kissingers private papers, not only the papers from his time in government, housed at the Library of Congress, but also the private papers donated to Yale University in 2011, which include more than a hundred boxes of personal writings, letters, and diaries dating back to the 1940s. I have also been able to interview the subject of the work on multiple occasions and at considerable length. Not only has this book been written with Henry Kissingers cooperation; it was written at his suggestion.