RaveThe New York Times Book Review... magisterial ... bids fair to be as close to the final word as possible on one of the most important, complex, moving, challenging and exasperating American public servants ... We can be grateful to John Lewis Gaddis for bringing Kennan back to us, thoughtful, human, self-centered, contradictory, inspirational — a permanent spur as consciences are wont to be. Masterfully researched, exhaustively documented, Gaddis’s moving work gives us a figure with whom, however one might differ on details, it was a privilege to be a contemporary ... Gaddis had the acumen to follow Kennan’s tortured quest and to convince us that Kennan had indeed reached his mountaintop.
