'Kissinger's Shadow' explores diplomat's long reach in US foreign policy - Los Angeles Times
The picture of Henry Kissinger that emerges in Greg Grandin's new book — of youthful brilliance curdled by an overweening ego and the will-to-power — is not an attractive one. The book's moral sensibilities broadly track those of some other eminent thinkers — including Seymour Hersh, Christopher Hitchens, Walter Isaacson and, most recently, Gary Bass — who have written about Kissinger's life and handiwork. Despite officially authorized attempts at a counternarrative (including a 2009 book by Alistair Horne and a forthcoming biography by Niall Ferguson), the evidence against Kissinger is simply overwhelming. In "Kissinger's Shadow," Grandin — a Pulitzer finalist, author of "The Empire of Necessity" and "Fordlandia" and professor of history at New York University — plumbs Kissinger's writing, especially his undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard,... SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter >>. In this early work, Kissinger privileged the idea of self-actualization, the idea that the greatness of a man is related to his ability to bend reality to his own desires. Applied to statecraft, this predisposes public officials toward action — even if, as was made painfully clear in the war in Southeast Asia, that action is undertaken only to convey resolve, or even the very ability to act, discounting the human... Source: www.latimes.com
