A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces the original best and brightest: Averell Harriman, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, George Kenan, Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, John McCloy, and Ambassador to the Soviet Union Charles Bohlen.

This was a fascinating and well-written book about six men that are probably unknown to today's general public but shaped US Foreign Policy from post WWI through Vietnam. Their lives moved through the 20th century intertwined via elite prep schools, Yale/Harvard, investment banking firms, law firms, high level cabinet roles and foreign policy posts. Their advice to the Presidents resulted in tragic wars - some right and some wrong, the strategies that prevented nuclear annihilation but also may have resulted in elongating the Cold War.

Isaacson and Thomas also provide a multi-sided view into each one's personality but especially Dean Acheson, George Kennan and Averill Harriman. We see their strengths of brilliance, integrity and deep patriotism but also their weaknesses. Kennan was overly sensitive, conducive to self-pity and had a tendency for literary flair and verbosity. Harriman became more self interested after WWII and sometimes placed politics over diplomacy. Acheson's persona came across as elitist, condescending and pompous which turned away many liberals, moderates and conservatives even when they agreed with his views.

The right schools, the right families and the right wealth played a large role in giving these six men the opportunity to shape the century. One can argue if that tradition has continued today or not. What may be different is that their vision and actions seemed to be more defined by pragmatism rather than ideology. The results are not always what we wanted but far better than the foes they battled that placed ideology over pragmatism.

I am very fascinated by this subject, but these authors repeats the same basic concepts throughout this long and droll piece of work. There was no reason to repeat that these wise men were dubious regarding Russian intentions during post WWII Europe over and over. I got it the first time.

... of a ten-year-old book that shouldn't be forgotten, the "biography" of American foreign policy from the Truman years to the apotheosis of Reagan. Like most biographies, this one concentrates on the childhood of the Cold War containment/exhaustion strategy, the DNA so to speak of neo-conservatism, born of a Democratic mother and a Republican father. Any reader of my other reviews, who doubts my assertion that Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Bush were mere inheritors of a foreign policy as rigidly sustained as if by primogeniture, should take on this book as ferociously as you dare.

The six Wise Men -- McCloy, Bohlen, Acheson, Lovett, Harriman, and Kennan -- would be the last to blush at being identified as "The Greatest Generation" or "The Best and the Brightest." Their egos and their sense of elite entitlement to lead are central to their story. This is a deeper portrait of their intellectual mode than either of those two just-mentioned best-sellers. Authors Isaacson and Thomas are clearly of the same "old school" as their subjects. Their admiration is in a sense self-adulation; even when the Wise Men acknowledged errors, the very nature of their errors turned out to reflect wisdom. My own admiration for the six is considerably more limited, but it's hard to deny the authors' thesis that these Yale and Harvard whiz-kids and their colleagues were the movers-and-shakers of administration after administration. Even as some of them lost a portion of their self-assurance in light of the massive failure in Vietnam, they continued to limn the hegemonist, exceptionalist conception of America which has continued to fail up to the current massive failure in Iraq. Given that all six were perceived as "liberals" aligned with Democratic administrations, some partisans of the other party may come to this book with an established antipathy toward its subjects. All I can say to that is "read it and learn!"

All sorts of things no one knows about how decisions were made after WWII that have affected all of us ever since. Well written too.

This is "an excellent read",, but it left me wondering why we have had no such minds in government in the last 30 years. It made me look back to our national leaders and great minds from the Founding Fathers through the short-lived Kennedy administration. From 1970 on, the bottom has fallen out. We have become late Rome.