PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Leebaert, a tech exec and freelance writer on politics and history, takes a granular but propulsive approach to their story. He’s a dependable guide through bureaucratic and diplomatic thickets, and few of his subjects’ maneuverings seem to have escaped his notice ... e’s interested in questions of leadership, especially during the war years—he’s written extensively about foreign policy—so his tale naturally gravitates toward the levers of national power and the officials angling to grasp them. Most appealingly, he offers persistent but unobtrusive parallels to our own disordered moment: reminders that we are still bedeviled by many of the same problems ... He doesn’t ignore his subjects’ private lives, although he doesn’t dwell on them either ... Mr. Leebaert’s touch here is light, even tentative, as if he’s reluctant to go poking around in the trash or let his attention drift from the realm of officialdom, and the book is disappointingly less vivacious as a result.