Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist (1) Paperback – Deckle Edge, 27 September 2016

There are three things going for Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist (henceforth The Idealist). The first is that the author, Niall Ferguson, has a felicity with words that is rare among academics. As anyone who has read the two-volume The House of Rothschild or The Cash Nexus can attest, Ferguson survived the systematic excoriation in graduate school that transforms the Queen’s English into dense, jargon-laden, and self-absorbed prose. The Idealist, for all its impressive archival and primary source research, remains a book for the general public and is not an impenetrable tract that only a few specialists will relish...[...]

a little too descriptive. Talks all about the environment and not much about Kissinger

Great arguments and counter arguments which flow fluidly through the whole text. Turgid scenarios for example the Cuban missile crisis are deconstructed through multiple strands and pieced together into a coherent narrative. Kissinger comes across as one of the thinkers of the age of enlightenment, at least as far as this first volume is concerned. Eagerly waiting for second volume meanwhile will be through another biography of an intellectual diplomat George Kennan by John Gaddis

very very boring and mediocre