Kissinger A Biography

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  kissinger a biography: Kissinger Walter Isaacson, 2005-09-27 As his parents finished packing the few personal belongings they were permitted to take out of Germany, the bespectacled 15-year-old stood in the corner of the apartment memorizing the details of the scene. He was a bookish and reflective child, with that odd mixture of ego and insecurity that can come from growing up smart yet persecuted. I'll be back someday, he said to the customs inspector who was surveying the boxes. Years later, he would recall how the official looked at him with the disdain of age and said nothing. Henry Kissinger was right: he did come back to his Bavarian birthplace, first as a soldier with the U.S. Army counterintelligence corps, then as a renowned scholar of international relations, and eventually as the dominant statesman of his era. By the time he was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to the Gallup Poll, the most admired person in America. In addition, as he conducted foreign policy with the air of a guest of honor at a cocktail party, he became one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world's imagination. Yet Kissinger was reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists, who in varying ways considered him a Strangelovean power manipulator dangerously devoid of moral principles. Kissinger's power-oriented approach to global politics resulted in a messy conclusion to the Vietnam War that included the secret bombing and invasion of Cambodia and the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Yet he was also able to design a triangular balance based on detente with Russia and an opening to China that preserved America's influence in the world. He had an instinctive feel for power, but it was not matched by a feel for the openness of America's democratic system or for the moral values that are a basic source of its world influence. This book, the first full biography of Kissinger, explores the relationship between his complex personality - brilliant, conspiratorial, furtive, prone to power struggles, charming yet at times deceitful - and the foreign policy he pursued. It draws on extensive interviews with Kissinger as well as 150 other sources, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, H.R. Haldeman, former South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, Russian diplomats, cabinet colleagues, disillusioned aides, childhood friends, and business clients. In addition, it makes use of many of Kissinger's private papers, personal letters, recorded telephone conversations, his desk diaries and those of various officials, memos of classified meetings, and transcripts of FBI wiretaps. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that takes this century's most colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his twilight years as a globe-trotting business consultant.
  kissinger a biography: Henry Kissinger and American Power Thomas A. Schwartz, 2020-08-25 “[Henry Kissinger and American Power] effectively separates the man from the myths.” —The Christian Science Monitor (Best Books of the Month) The definitive biography of Henry Kissinger—at least for those who neither revere nor revile him. Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been one of America’s most lavishly praised—and most reviled—public figures. He was hailed as a “miracle worker” for his peacemaking in the Middle East, pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, negotiation of an end to the Vietnam War, and secret plan to open the United States to China. He was assailed from both the left and the right for his complicity in the pointless sacrifice of American and Vietnamese lives, indifference to human rights, and reliance on deception and intrigue. Was he a brilliant master strategist—the “20th century’s greatest 19th-century statesman” (Robert Kaplan, The Atlantic)—or a cold-blooded monster who eroded America’s moral standing for the sake of self-promotion? In this masterfully researched biography, the renowned diplomatic historian Thomas A. Schwartz offers an authoritative and evenhanded answer to this question. While other biographers have engaged in hagiography or demonology, Schwartz takes a measured view of his subject. He recognizes Kissinger’s important successes and insights into the foreign policy issues of his time, but also acknowledges his failures, his penchant for backbiting, and his reliance on ingratiating and fawning praise of the president as a source of his own power. Throughout, Schwartz stresses Kissinger’s artful invention of himself as a celebrity diplomat and his domination of the medium of television news. He also notes Kissinger’s sensitivity to domestic and partisan politics, complicating—and undermining—the image of the far-seeing statesman who stood above the squabbles of popular strife. Rounded and textured, and rich with new insights into key dilemmas of American policy, Henry Kissinger and American Power is an essential guide to a man whose legacy is as complex as the last sixty years of U.S. history itself.
  kissinger a biography: The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World Barry Gewen, 2020-04-28 A new portrait of Henry Kissinger focusing on the fundamental ideas underlying his policies: Realism, balance of power, and national interest. Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries’ attempts at democracy. For this reason, many today on both the right and left dismiss him as a latter-day Machiavelli, ignoring the breadth and complexity of his thought. With The Inevitability of Tragedy, Barry Gewen corrects this shallow view, presenting the fascinating story of Kissinger’s development as both a strategist and an intellectual and examining his unique role in government through his ideas. It analyzes his contentious policies in Vietnam and Chile, guided by a fresh understanding of his definition of Realism, the belief that world politics is based on an inevitable, tragic competition for power. Crucially, Gewen places Kissinger’s pessimistic thought in a European context. He considers how Kissinger was deeply impacted by his experience as a refugee from Nazi Germany, and explores the links between his notions of power and those of his mentor, Hans Morgenthau—the father of Realism—as well as those of two other German-Jewish émigrés who shared his concerns about the weaknesses of democracy: Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt. The Inevitability of Tragedy offers a thoughtful perspective on the origins of Kissinger’s sober worldview and argues that a reconsideration of his career is essential at a time when American foreign policy lacks direction.
  kissinger a biography: Henry Kissinger and the American Century Jeremi Suri, 2009-05-01 What made Henry Kissinger the kind of diplomat he was? What experiences and influences shaped his worldview and provided the framework for his approach to international relations? Jeremi Suri offers a thought-provoking, interpretive study of one of the most influential and controversial political figures of the twentieth century. Drawing on research in more than six countries in addition to extensive interviews with Kissinger and others, Suri analyzes the sources of Kissinger's ideas and power and explains why he pursued the policies he did. Kissinger's German-Jewish background, fears of democratic weakness, belief in the primacy of the relationship between the United States and Europe, and faith in the indispensable role America plays in the world shaped his career and his foreign policy. Suri shows how Kissinger's early years in Weimar and Nazi Germany, his experiences in the U.S. Army and at Harvard University, and his relationships with powerful patrons--including Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon--shed new light on the policymaker. Kissinger's career was a product of the global changes that made the American Century. He remains influential because his ideas are rooted so deeply in dominant assumptions about the world. In treating Kissinger fairly and critically as a historical figure, without polemical judgments, Suri provides critical context for this important figure. He illuminates the legacies of Kissinger's policies for the United States in the twenty-first century.
  kissinger a biography: The Trial of Henry Kissinger Christopher Hitchens, 2001 In this incendiary book, Hitchens takes the floor as prosecuting counsel and mounts a devastating indictment of Henry Kissinger, whose ambitions and ruthlessness have directly resulted in both individual murders and widespread, indiscriminate slaughter.
  kissinger a biography: Diplomacy Henry Kissinger, 2011-12-27 A brilliant, sweeping history of diplomacy that includes personal stories from the noted former Secretary of State, including his stunning reopening of relations with China. The seminal work on foreign policy and the art of diplomacy. Moving from a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of his negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America’s approach to foreign affairs has always differed vastly from that of other nations. Brilliant, controversial, and profoundly incisive, Diplomacy stands as the culmination of a lifetime of diplomatic service and scholarship. It is vital reading for anyone concerned with the forces that have shaped our world today and will impact upon it tomorrow.
  kissinger a biography: Kissinger's Shadow Greg Grandin, 2015-08-25 A new account of America's most controversial diplomat that moves beyond praise or condemnation to reveal Kissinger as the architect of America's current imperial stance In his fascinating new book Kissinger's Shadow, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary America—its never-ending wars abroad and political polarization at home—we have to understand Henry Kissinger. Examining Kissinger's own writings, as well as a wealth of newly declassified documents, Grandin reveals how Richard Nixon's top foreign policy advisor, even as he was presiding over defeat in Vietnam and a disastrous, secret, and illegal war in Cambodia, was helping to revive a militarized version of American exceptionalism centered on an imperial presidency. Believing that reality could be bent to his will, insisting that intuition is more important in determining policy than hard facts, and vowing that past mistakes should never hinder future bold action, Kissinger anticipated, even enabled, the ascendance of the neoconservative idealists who took America into crippling wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Going beyond accounts focusing either on Kissinger's crimes or accomplishments, Grandin offers a compelling new interpretation of the diplomat's continuing influence on how the United States views its role in the world.
  kissinger a biography: The Price of Power Seymour Hersh, 2013-10-29 Price of Power examines Henry Kissinger’s influence on the development of the foreign policy of the United States during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
  kissinger a biography: Master of the Game Martin Indyk, 2021-10-26 A perceptive and provocative history of Henry Kissinger's diplomatic negotiations in the Middle East that illuminates the unique challenges and barriers Kissinger and his successors have faced in their attempts to broker peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. “A wealth of lessons for today, not only about the challenges in that region but also about the art of diplomacy . . . the drama, dazzling maneuvers, and grand strategic vision.”—Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker More than twenty years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Martin Indyk—a former United States ambassador to Israel and special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013—has experienced these political frustrations and disappointments firsthand. Now, in an attempt to understand the arc of American diplomatic influence in the Middle East, he returns to the origins of American-led peace efforts and to the man who created the Middle East peace process—Henry Kissinger. Based on newly available documents from American and Israeli archives, extensive interviews with Kissinger, and Indyk's own interactions with some of the main players, the author takes readers inside the negotiations. Here is a roster of larger-than-life characters—Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Hafez al-Assad, and Kissinger himself. Indyk's account is both that of a historian poring over the records of these events, as well as an inside player seeking to glean lessons for Middle East peacemaking. He makes clear that understanding Kissinger's design for Middle East peacemaking is key to comprehending how to—and how not to—make peace.
  kissinger a biography: Ending the Vietnam War Henry Kissinger, 2003-02-11 Now, for the first time, Kissinger gives us in a single volume an in-depth, inside view of the Vietnam War, personally collected, annotated, revised, and updated from his bestselling memoirs and his book Diplomacy. Many other authors have written about what they thought happened—or thought should have happened—in Vietnam, but it was Henry Kissinger who was there at the epicenter, involved in every decision from the long, frustrating negotiations with the North Vietnamese delegation to America's eventual extrication from the war. Here, Kissinger writes with firm, precise knowledge, supported by meticulous documentation that includes his own memoranda to and replies from President Nixon. He tells about the tragedy of Cambodia, the collateral negotiations with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, the disagreements within the Nixon and Ford administrations, the details of all negotiations in which he was involved, the domestic unrest and protest in the States, and the day-to-day military to diplomatic realities of the war as it reached the White House. As compelling and exciting as Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, Ending the Vietnam War also reveals insights about the bigger-than-life personalities—Johnson, Nixon, de Gaulle, Ho Chi Minh, Brezhnev—who were caught up in a war that forever changed international relations. This is history on a grand scale, and a book of overwhelming importance to the public record.
  kissinger a biography: Nixon and Kissinger Robert Dallek, 2009-10-13 The renowned scholar’s epic dual biography of the 37th president and his powerful secretary of state: “A classic work of contemporary American history” (The Los Angeles Times). Working side by side in the White House, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were two of the most compelling, contradictory, and powerful figures in the second half of the twentieth century. While their personalities could hardly have seemed more different, both were largely self-made men, brimming with ambition, driven by their own inner demons, and often ruthless in pursuit of their goals. Tapping into a wealth of recently declassified archives, Robert Dallek uncovers fascinating details about Nixon and Kissinger’s tumultuous personal relationship and brilliantly analyzes their shared roles in monumental historical events—including the nightmare of Vietnam, the unprecedented opening to China, détente with the Soviet Union, the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, the disastrous overthrow of Allende in Chile, and the scandal of Watergate.
  kissinger a biography: World Order Henry Kissinger, 2015-09 a conviction that has guided its policies ever since. Now international affairs take place on a global basis, and these historical concepts of world order are meeting. Every region participates in questions of high policy in every other, often instantaneously. Yet there is no consensus among the major actors about the rules and limits guiding this process, or its ultimate destination. The result is mounting tension. Grounded in Kissinger's deep study of history and his experience as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, World Order guides readers through crucial episodes in recent world history. Kissinger offers a unique glimpse into the inner deliberations of the Nixon administration's negotiations with Hanoi over the end of the Vietnam War, as well as Ronald Reagan's tense debates with Soviet Premier Gorbachev in Reykjavík.
  kissinger a biography: American Sketches Walter Isaacson, 2009-11-24 One of America's most versatile writers, author of bestselling biographies such as Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, has assembled a gallery of portraits of (mostly) Americans that celebreate genius, talent, and versatility, and traces his own education as a writer and biographer. In this collection of essays, the brilliant, acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson reflects on lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and other interesting characters he has chronicled both as biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, but that is not the secret to their success. They had qualities that were even more rare, such as imagination and true curiousity. Isaacson also reflects on how he became a writer, the lessons he learned from various people he met, and the challenges for journalism in the digital age. He also offers loving tributes to his hometown of New Orleans, which offers many of the ingredients for a creative culture, and to the Louisiana novelist Walker Percy, who was an early mentor. In an anecdotal and personal way, Isaacson describes the joys of writing and the way that tales about the lives of fascinating people can enlighten our own lives.
  kissinger a biography: Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson, 2011 Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues--Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
  kissinger a biography: Years of Upheaval Henry Kissinger, 2011-05-24 In this second volume of Henry Kissinger’s “endlessly fascinating memoirs” (The New York Times), Kissinger recounts his years as President Nixon’s Secretary of State from 1972 to 1974, including the ending of the Vietnam War, the 1973 Middle East War and oil embargo, Watergate, and Nixon’s resignation. Years of Upheaval opens with Dr. Kissinger being appointed Secretary of State. Among other events of these turbulent years that he recounts are his trip to Hanoi after the Vietnam cease-fire, his efforts to settle the war in Cambodia, the “Year of Europe,” two Nixon-Brezhnev summit meetings and the controversies over arms control and détente, the military alert and showdown with the Soviet Union over the Middle East war, the subsequent oil crisis, the origins of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, the fall of Salvador Allende in Chile, and the tumultuous events surrounding Nixon’s resignation. Throughout are candid appraisals of world leaders, including Nixon, Golda Meir, Anwar Sadat, King Faisal, Hafez al-Asad, Chairman Mao, Leonid Brezhnev, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Georges Pompidou, and many more. At once illuminating, fascinating, and profound, Years of Upheaval is a lasting contribution to the history of our time by one of its chief protagonists.
  kissinger a biography: The Necessity for Choice Henry Kissinger, 1984
  kissinger a biography: Bismarck Jonathan Steinberg, 2011-06-01 This riveting, New York Times bestselling biography illuminates the life of Otto von Bismarck, the statesman who unified Germany but who also embodied everything brutal and ruthless about Prussian culture. Jonathan Steinberg draws heavily on contemporary writings, allowing Bismarck's friends and foes to tell the story. What rises from these pages is a complex giant of a man: a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of evangelical Protestantism who secularized schools and introduced civil divorce. Bismarck may have been in sheer ability the most intelligent man to direct a great state in modern times. His brilliance and insight dazzled his contemporaries. But all agreed there was also something demonic, diabolical, overwhelming, beyond human attributes, in Bismarck's personality. He was a kind of malign genius who, behind the various postures, concealed an ice-cold contempt for his fellow human beings and a drive to control and rule them. As one contemporary noted: the Bismarck regime was a constant orgy of scorn and abuse of mankind, collectively and individually. In this comprehensive and expansive biography--a brilliant study in power--Jonathan Steinberg brings Bismarck to life, revealing the stark contrast between the Iron Chancellor's unmatched political skills and his profoundly flawed human character.
  kissinger a biography: Guido Goldman Martin Klingst, 2021-10-15 A careful reconstruction of the life of Guido Goldman, founder of the German Marshall Fund and Harvard University’s Center for European Studies. “In his distinguished career, Guido Goldman has made important contributions to both the American and German societies in art, education, and their political evolution. He has created essential institutions to enhance the interaction of America and Germany. And he has been an inspiring and reliable friend through a long life.”—Henry Kissinger The son of Nahum Goldmann, who was the founder of the World Jewish Congress, Guido Goldman was one of the most distinguished protagonists of the reintegration of Germany into the international community after the defeat of Nazism in 1945. His large network of friends and interlocutors included Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl, Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte and Marlene Dietrich. His generous philanthropy extended to the preservation of non-Western cultures threatened by extinction, such as the IKAT project through which he revived the unique ancient textile arts of Central Asia. From the preface Almost no one knows about Goldman. Although not without vanity, he never sought the spotlight, preferring to hang back quietly, pulling strings from behind the scenes. Nonetheless, he was a key figure in contemporary history; his life story reflects the twists and turns of a century of German, Jewish, European, and American history. His biography allows us to observe the continued impact of the Nazi era, the Cold War, and American racism; as if through a magnifying glass, we can examine the abysses, hopes, longings, successes, and defeats of the twentieth century. These twentieth-century events and emotions have not disappeared; they continue to resonate in our own world.
  kissinger a biography: The Meaning of History Henry Kissinger, 2022 The Meaning of History is the senior thesis written by Henry Kissinger at Harvard university in 1950, when he was twenty-seven. More than 70 years later it is now being published for the first time. The thesis explores the thought of three distinct but important thinkers in the canon of Western philosophical and historical thought, in a way that also reflected Kissinger's own transition from the Continental world to the Atlantic. Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) was a German historian and philosopher; Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) a British historian and philosopher and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a Prussian of the European Enlightenment era and one of the most important moral and political philosophers to emerge from his time. The study is intimidatingly long and weighty in its own right; at almost four hundred typed pages, it wrestles with some of the first-order dilemmas of Western political, philosophical, and moral thought. Its scope ranges from the Enlightenment through to the midpoint of the twentieth century - an era scourged by two world wars and the advent of the nuclear age. Equally important, it provides great insight into the conceptual perspective of its author, Henry Kissinger, who was to become the most influential American scholar statesman of the post 1945 period.
  kissinger a biography: Kissinger Walter Isaacson, 1992-01
  kissinger a biography: The Flawed Architect Jussi M. Hanhimaki, 2004-09-09 Henry Kissinger dominated American foreign relations like no other figure in recent history. He negotiated an end to American involvement in the Vietnam War, opened relations with Communist China, and orchestrated détente with the Soviet Union. Yet he is also the man behind the secret bombing of Cambodia and policies leading to the overthrow of Chile's President Salvador Allende. Which is more accurate, the picture of Kissinger the skilled diplomat or Kissinger the war criminal? In The Flawed Architect, the first major reassessment of Kissinger in over a decade, historian Jussi Hanhimaki paints a subtle, carefully composed portrait of America's most famous and infamous statesman. Drawing on extensive research from newly declassified files, the author follows Kissinger from his beginnings in the Nixon administration up to the current controversy fed by Christopher Hitchens over whether Kissinger is a war criminal. Hanhimaki guides the reader through White House power struggles and debates behind the Cambodia and Laos invasions, the search for a strategy in Vietnam, the breakthrough with China, and the unfolding of Soviet-American detente. Here, too, are many other international crises of the period--the Indo-Pakistani War, the Yom Kippur War, the Angolan civil war--all set against the backdrop of Watergate. Along the way, Hanhimaki sheds light on Kissinger's personal flaws--he was obsessed with secrecy and bureaucratic infighting in an administration that self-destructed in its abuse of power--as well as his great strengths as a diplomat. We see Kissinger negotiating, threatening and joking with virtually all of the key foreign leaders of the 1970s, from Mao to Brezhnev and Anwar Sadat to Golda Meir. This well researched account brings to life the complex nature of American foreign policymaking during the Kissinger years. It will be the standard work on Kissinger for years to come.
  kissinger a biography: Kissinger on Kissinger Winston Lord, 2019-05-14
  kissinger a biography: Kissinger Alistair Horne, 2009-06-16 A portrait of the controversial presidential advisor during a critical year in his career covers a wide range of topics from the signing of the pact to end the war in Vietnam and his appointment as secretary of state to his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Watergate scandal.
  kissinger a biography: Sideshow William Shawcross, 2023-12-21 Although there are many books and films dealing with the Vietnam War, Sideshow tells the truth about America's secret and illegal war with Cambodia from 1969 to 1973. William Shawcross interviewed hundreds of people of all nationalities, including cabinet ministers, military men, and civil servants, and extensively researched U.S. Government documents. This full-scale investigation—with material new to this edition—exposes how Kissinger and Nixon treated Cambodia as a sideshow. Although the president and his assistant claimed that a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia was necessary to eliminate North Vietnamese soldiers who were attacking American troops across the border, Shawcross maintains that the bombings only spread the conflict, but led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and the subsequent massacre of a third of Cambodia's population.
  kissinger a biography: Henry Kissinger Foreign Policy E-book Boxed Set Henry Kissinger, 2013-09-24 This ebook boxed set includes the following 3 books by Henry Kissinger, detailing America’s approach to foreign policy. Crisis: By drawing upon hitherto unpublished transcripts of his telephone conversations during the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the last days of the Vietnam War (1975), Henry Kissinger reveals what goes on behind the scenes at the highest levels in a diplomatic crisis. Does America Need A Foreign Policy?: With a new afterword by the author that addresses the situation in the aftermath of September 11, this thoughtful and important book, written by America's most famous diplomatist, explains why we urgently need a new and coherent foreign policy and what our foreign policy goals should be in this new millennium. In seven accessible chapters, Kissinger provides a crystalline assessment of how the United States' ascendancy as the world's dominant presence in the twentieth century may be effectively reconciled with the urgent need in the twenty-first century to achieve a bold new world order. Diplomacy: Moving from a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of his negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America's approach to foreign affairs has always differed vastly from that of other nations. This is vital reading for anyone concerned with the forces that have shaped our world today and will impact upon it tomorrow.
  kissinger a biography: After Saigon's Fall Amanda C. Demmer, 2021-04-08 Few historians of the Vietnam War have covered the post-1975 era or engaged comprehensively with refugee politics, humanitarianism, and human rights as defining issues of the period. After Saigon's Fall is the first major work to uncover this history. Amanda C. Demmer offers a new account of the post-War normalization of US–Vietnam relations by centering three major transformations of the late twentieth century: the reassertion of the US Congress in American foreign policy; the Indochinese diaspora and changing domestic and international refugee norms; and the intertwining of humanitarianism and the human rights movement. By tracing these domestic, regional, and global phenomena, After Saigon's Fall captures the contingencies and contradictions inherent in US-Vietnamese normalization. Using previously untapped archives to recover a riveting narrative with both policymakers and nonstate advocates at its center, Demmer's book also reveals much about US politics and society in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
  kissinger a biography: Paper and Iron Niall Ferguson, 2002-11-07 Few economic events have had a more profound or enduring impact than the German hyperinflation of 1923, still remembered popularly as a root cause of Hitler's rise to power. Yet many historians have argued that inflationary policies were, on balance, advantageous to post-1918 Germany, both boosting growth and helping to reduce reparations. The scholarly consensus is that there was no viable alternative to inflation. In Paper and Iron Niall Ferguson takes a different view. He argues that inflation was indeed an economic and political disaster, and further that there were alternative economic policies which could have stabilised the German currency in 1920. To explain why these were not adopted he points to long-term defects in the political institutions of the Reich which went back as far as the 1890s and which persisted beyond 1918. The book therefore reveals the Wilhelmine origins of Weimar's failure, as well as casting light on the origins of the Third Reich.
  kissinger a biography: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah Roham Alvandi, 2014 In this revisionist account of U.S.-Iran relations during the Cold War, Roham Alvandi provides a detailed historical study of the partnership that Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran forged with U.S. President Richard Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.
  kissinger a biography: On China Henry Kissinger, 2012-04-24 “Fascinating, shrewd . . . The book deftly traces the rhythms and patterns of Chinese history.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “No one can lay claim to so much influence on the shaping of foreign policy over the past 50 years as Henry Kissinger.” —The Financial Times In this sweeping and insightful history, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book length to a country he has known intimately for decades and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. On China illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such pivotal events as the initial encounters between China and tight line modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, and Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing. With a new final chapter on the emerging superpower’s twenty-first-century role in global politics and economics, On China provides historical perspective on Chinese foreign affairs from one of the premier statesmen of our time.
  kissinger a biography: George F. Kennan John Lewis Gaddis, 2012-08-28 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, this extraordinary biography delves into the mind of the brilliant diplomat who shaped U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union for decades. This is a landmark work of history and biography that reveals the vast influence and rich inner landscape of a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.
  kissinger a biography: The Arrogance of Power Anthony Summers, 2001-08-01 The controversial New York Times–bestselling biography of America’s most infamous president written by a master of investigative political reporting. Anthony Summers’s towering biography of Richard Nixon reveals a tormented figure whose criminal behavior did not begin with Watergate. Drawing on more than a thousand interviews and five years of research, Summers traces Nixon’s entire career, revealing a man driven by addiction to power and intrigue. His subversion of democracy during Watergate was the culmination of years of cynical political manipulation. Evidence suggests the former president had problems with alcohol and prescription drugs, was mentally unstable, and was abusive to his wife, Pat. Summers discloses previously unrevealed facts about Nixon’s role in the plots against Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende, his sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks in 1968, and his acceptance of funds from dubious sources. The Arrogance of Power shows how the actions of one tormented man influenced 50 years of American history, in ways still reverberating today. “Summers has done an enormous service. . . . The inescapable conclusion, well body-guarded by meticulous research and footnotes, is that in the Nixon era the United States was in essence a ‘rogue state.’ It had a ruthless, paranoid and unstable leader who did not hesitate to break the laws of his own country.”—Christopher Hitchens, The New York Times Book Review “A superbly researched and documented account—the last word on this dark and devious man.”—Paul Theroux
  kissinger a biography: White House Years Henry Kissinger, 2011-05-24 One of the most important books to come out of the Nixon Administration, the New York Times bestselling White House Years covers Henry Kissinger’s first four years (1969–1973) as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. Among the momentous events recounted in this first volume of Kissinger’s timeless memoirs are his secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese in Paris to end the Vietnam War, the Jordan crisis of 1970, the India-Pakistan war of 1971, his back-channel and face-to-face negotiations with Soviet leaders to limit the nuclear arms race, his secret journey to China, and the historic summit meetings in Moscow and Beijing in 1972. He covers major controversies of the period, including events in Laos and Cambodia, his “peace is at hand” press conference and the breakdown of talks with the North Vietnamese that led to the Christmas bombing in 1972. Throughout, Kissinger presents candid portraits of world leaders, including Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir, Jordan’s King Hussein, Leonid Brezhnev, Chairman Mao and Chou En-lai, Willy Brandt, Charles de Gaulle, and many others. White House Years is Henry Kissinger’s invaluable and lasting contribution to the history of this crucial time.
  kissinger a biography: The Way Home Ernestine Bradley, 2006-03-14 Growing up in Bavaria during World War II, Ernestine Bradley came to know wartime dislocations and food shortages, along with the challenges of taking care of her siblings while her mother was ill. The men of her hometown were away at war, but their absence created an exciting unexpected freedom–a freedom she sought again at 21 when she became a stewardess, moved to New York and went on to marry a shy basketball star who played for the New York Knicks. Yet the paradoxes of her childhood shaped Bradley’s life. Her hard-won discipline helped her maintain a full-time career as a professor while she commuted weekly to Washington and her husband’s public life; and Germany’s literary response to the holocaust of which she had been unaware became her scholarly passion. Cancer confronted her with a personal war, ultimately demanding a vulnerability she had never allowed herself. Frank, warm, and deeply moving, The Way Home is an inspiring American story.
  kissinger a biography: Uncertain Allies Klaus Larres, 2022-01-01 A clear and comprehensive examination of transatlantic relations during the Nixon/Kissinger era The early 1970s represented a pivotal moment in U.S. ties with Europe. Klaus Larres tells this story in a fascinating and highly readable manner. Essential reading.--Daniel S. Hamilton, Johns Hopkins University/Woodrow Wilson Center The United States has long been conflicted between promoting a united Western Europe in order to strengthen its defense of the West, and fearing that a more united Western Europe might not submit to American political and economic leadership. The era of wholehearted support for European unity was limited to the immediate postwar era. The stances of the past three U.S. presidents--Bush's unilateralism, Obama's insistence on leading from behind, and Trump's overt hostility toward the European Union--were prefigured by Washington's economic and geopolitical strategies of the 1960s and 1970s. Concentrating on the policies of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Klaus Larres argues that their years in office were the major turning point when benign hegemony gave way to an attitude toward Europe that was seldom better than lukewarm, frequently even outright hostile, and that was returned in kind. This book offers an unusually clear and comprehensive examination of transatlantic relations during the Nixon era.
  kissinger a biography: Crisis Henry Kissinger, 2015-04-07 By drawing upon previously unpublished transcripts of his telephone conversations during the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the last days of the Vietnam War (1975), Henry Kissinger reveals what goes on behind the scenes at the highest levels in a diplomatic crisis. The two major foreign policy crises in this book, one successfully negotiated, one that ended tragically, were unique in that they moved so fast that much of the work on them had to be handled by telephone. The longer of the two sections deals in detail with the Yom Kippur War and is full of revelations, as well as great relevancy: In Kissinger's conversations with Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister; Simcha Dinitz, Israeli ambassador to the U.S.; Mohamed el-Zayyat, the Egyptian Foreign Minister; Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S.; Kurt Waldheim, the Secretary General of the U.N.; and a host of others, as well as with President Nixon, many of the main elements of the current problems in the Middle East can be seen. The section on the end of the Vietnam War is a tragic drama, as Kissinger tries to help his president and a divided nation through the final moments of a lost war. It is full of astonishing material, such as Kissinger's trying to secure the evacuation of a Marine company which, at the very last minute, is discovered to still be in Saigon as the city is about to fall, and his exchanges with Ambassador Martin in Saigon, who is reluctant to leave his embassy. This is a book that presents perhaps the best record of the inner workings of diplomacy at the superheated pace and tension of real crisis.
  kissinger a biography: With No Apologies Barry Morris Goldwater, 1980-09
  kissinger a biography: Kissinger Walter Isaacson, 1993
  kissinger a biography: Kissinger Niall Ferguson, 2015-09-29 A definitive portrait of the American statesman, based on unprecedented access to his private papers, challenges common misconceptions to trace Kissinger's beliefs to philosophical idealism.
  kissinger a biography: Kissinger. Portrait of a Mind. (1. Ed.) Stephen Richards Graubard, 1973
Is This a Glimpse of the End Times Future? - Rapture Forums
Mar 26, 2025 · Kissinger’s co-authors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and longtime Microsoft senior executive Craig Mundie, finished the combined work after Kissinger’s death, and The …

Is This a Glimpse of the End Times Future? | Rapture Forums
Mar 26, 2025 · Kissinger’s co-authors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and longtime Microsoft senior executive Craig Mundie, finished the combined work after Kissinger’s death, and The …

The World Prepares to Recognize a Hamas Palestinian State
Feb 26, 2024 · The internal reasoning is probably similar to the one that guided Nixon and Kissinger during another October war 50 years ago. During the Yom Kippur War, Secretary of …

1 in 10 American Jews Support Hamas | Rapture Forums
Oct 30, 2023 · 1 in 10 American Jews Support Hamas Jews for Jewish Genocide. By Daniel Greenfield On October 18, Hamas supporters stormed the United States Capitol and rallied in …

The War Against Life - Rapture Forums
Feb 25, 2021 · Notice what Henry Kissinger said on February 25, 2009 when he spoke to the WHO about the role future vaccines would play in killing people with the aim to reduce the …

Time Bomb - Rapture Forums
Jun 5, 2023 · But now Americans live, on average, to age 76. I’m 76. Henry Kissinger is 100. Since most of us live so long, there are just not enough workers to pay for us. Yet our vote …

The Resurgence of Israel’s Military in Bible Prophecy (Part 2 of 2)
Dec 4, 2023 · Just a few hours before the attack began, IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar recommended a preemptive air strike and immediate mobilization of the reserves. But Prime …

Why Israel Was Right to Ban UNRWA | Rapture Forums
Nov 9, 2024 · No other group of refugees is similarly treated. Henry Kissinger was a “refugee from Germany.” His son David, born in New York, is not. Vladimir Nabokov was a “refugee from …

Ukraine: Only Bad and Worse Choices - Rapture Forums
Dec 4, 2022 · This predicament of only bad and worse choices is one endemic to foreign policy, as military violence always exacts the price of “exorbitant risk,” as Henry Kissinger put it, of …

The New World Order in Bible Prophecy - Rapture Forums
Aug 12, 2017 · Hidden in Plain View: The New World Order in Bible Prophecy

Is This a Glimpse of the End Times Future? - Rapture Forums
Mar 26, 2025 · Kissinger’s co-authors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and longtime Microsoft senior executive Craig Mundie, finished the combined work after Kissinger’s death, and The …

Is This a Glimpse of the End Times Future? | Rapture Forums
Mar 26, 2025 · Kissinger’s co-authors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and longtime Microsoft senior executive Craig Mundie, finished the combined work after Kissinger’s death, and The …

The World Prepares to Recognize a Hamas Palestinian State
Feb 26, 2024 · The internal reasoning is probably similar to the one that guided Nixon and Kissinger during another October war 50 years ago. During the Yom Kippur War, Secretary of …

1 in 10 American Jews Support Hamas | Rapture Forums
Oct 30, 2023 · 1 in 10 American Jews Support Hamas Jews for Jewish Genocide. By Daniel Greenfield On October 18, Hamas supporters stormed the United States Capitol and rallied in …

The War Against Life - Rapture Forums
Feb 25, 2021 · Notice what Henry Kissinger said on February 25, 2009 when he spoke to the WHO about the role future vaccines would play in killing people with the aim to reduce the …

Time Bomb - Rapture Forums
Jun 5, 2023 · But now Americans live, on average, to age 76. I’m 76. Henry Kissinger is 100. Since most of us live so long, there are just not enough workers to pay for us. Yet our vote …

The Resurgence of Israel’s Military in Bible Prophecy (Part 2 of 2)
Dec 4, 2023 · Just a few hours before the attack began, IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar recommended a preemptive air strike and immediate mobilization of the reserves. But Prime …

Why Israel Was Right to Ban UNRWA | Rapture Forums
Nov 9, 2024 · No other group of refugees is similarly treated. Henry Kissinger was a “refugee from Germany.” His son David, born in New York, is not. Vladimir Nabokov was a “refugee from …

Ukraine: Only Bad and Worse Choices - Rapture Forums
Dec 4, 2022 · This predicament of only bad and worse choices is one endemic to foreign policy, as military violence always exacts the price of “exorbitant risk,” as Henry Kissinger put it, of …

The New World Order in Bible Prophecy - Rapture Forums
Aug 12, 2017 · Hidden in Plain View: The New World Order in Bible Prophecy