Ebook: The wise men: six friends and the world they made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy

Architects of the American century -- World of their own : to the manner born -- Tap days : "to run with the swift" -- Joint ventures : Harriman and Lovett on Wall Street -- World courts : McCloy and Acheson before the bar -- A pretty good club : Kennan and Bohlen in the Foreign Service -- On active service : enlisting in a noble cause -- Heavenly twins : McCloy and Lovett at the War Department -- Missions to Moscow : Harriman, Acheson, Bohlen and Kennan wrestle with a biting bear -- Words of one syllable : the education of Harry Truman -- Line down the middle : splitting Germany and the atom -- The blinding dawn : diplomacy in an atomic age -- Containment : sensitive to the logic of force -- Order from chaos : "like apples in a barrel" -- "Simple honest men" : the selling of the Marshall Plan -- Crisis : "will Russia move first?" -- "A different world" : of super bombs and primitives -- War : "no weakness of purpose here" -- Nadir : disaster at the Yalu -- Exile : the wilderness years -- Passing the torch : "no, sir, my bearings are burnt out" -- Twilight struggles : reunion at the brink -- LBJ's establishment : "I told the President he was wholly right" -- Judgment days : last supper of the wise men -- Legacy :"never in such good company.";This book is a collective biography of the best and brightest men in government and their foreign policies which dominate our actions to this day. It includes data on World War II diplomacy, the Cold War, Communist containment, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, Kennedy and Johnson diplomacy, and Vietnam War diplomacy. A blend of personal biography and public drama, it 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 CharlesBohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.