A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama,
The Wise Men introduces the original best and
brightest, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions
brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, the
freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt's special envoy to
Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state
who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman
and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George
Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the
Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war,
undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout
the formative years of the Cold War; John McCloy, one of the
nation's most influential private citizens; and Charles
Bohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.