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A review by jarrodsbirch95
George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis
4.0
Like all good biographies, this tells you as much about the time in which its subject lived and the people with whom they worked and battled as it does about the ins and outs of their life. In this case, Gaddis gives an insight into 50-60 years of US-Russian relations, starting from post-Revolution but pre-WWII all the way up to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In Gaddis' retelling of that period, we get the pleasure of Kennan's perspective on (and relations with): FDR, Truman and Kennedy; Marshall, Acheson and Kissinger; Stalin, Brezhnev and Gorbachev. None of these perspectives are boring; all - in true Kennan style, one learns - have a generous dollop of histrionics. All of this makes Kennan an entertaining subject.
My only qualm was that even as an International Relations graduate, the reproductions of Kennan's (many) articles, speeches, diary entries and letters about the Cold War felt a little tiresome. Maybe these were unavoidable here, but they tended to add up and in some parts felt like a crutch for broader analysis of events.
My only qualm was that even as an International Relations graduate, the reproductions of Kennan's (many) articles, speeches, diary entries and letters about the Cold War felt a little tiresome. Maybe these were unavoidable here, but they tended to add up and in some parts felt like a crutch for broader analysis of events.