Dean Acheson

Dean Acheson is perhaps best remembered as President Harry Truman's powerful secretary of state. Yet he also played a major role in politics and foreign affairs after his tenure in the Truman administration. 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. "Lucid and graceful...A fascinating window on the Cold War, seen through the eyes of a giant."-Evan Thomas, The New York Times Book Review "A good and fundamentally well-ballanced book."-George Ball, The New York Review of Books "Brinkley's book is valuable...What Brinkley has done, by focusing on the phase of Acheson's life when his native conservatism was most outspokenly revealed, is to highlight the reckless perversity of the charges laid against him by his enemies, and so to restore to him the reputation he does deserve, as the grandmaster of the anti-Communist grand alliance."-Godfrey Hodgson, The New Republic "A new, thoughtful and thorough study of Acheson in retirement traces his continuing influence over American affairs in long overdue detail." -Martin Walker, Washington Post Book World "A vivid and compelling portrait of the lion in winter."-The Philadelphia Inquirer "The most full and fully informed study to date on Acheson."-Raymond L. Garthoff, New York Newsday "A fascinating, slightly off-center perspective on the Cold War world and the mentality which governed American foreign policy from 1947 to 1991."-Warren Kimball, Times Literary Supplement "Brinkley's treatment of Acheson is fair and objective...[He] has done students of recent American history a signal service in giving him his say."-H.W. Brands, American Historical Review