This highly detailed account of the lives of six prominent architects of American foreign policy in the Cold War era offers an illuminating perspective on many important decisions from Lend-Lease to the hydrogen bomb. The six protagonists embody “the Establishment” in an era when the phrase had real meaning. They formed part of a network of men with similar values and backgrounds who truly did shape the world. The book, first published in 1986, lacks the perspective of a post-Cold War world and, perhaps, revelations from Russian archives opened in the 1990s. Narrator Jonathan Reese does a workmanlike job of conveying an enormous amount of information with interest. Reese seems completely at home with the language of the Cold War. F.C. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
The author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power recommends books that illuminate American history.