The inevitability of tragedy: Henry Kissinger and his world

摘要

The inevitability of tragedy is not a typical scholarly book or a biography of Henry Kissinger. This is an advantage as readers already have access to Kissinger's three-volume autobiography and an authorized biography by Niall Ferguson. Instead, Barry Gewen is interested in analysing and explaining Kissinger's way of thinking and his intellectual approach towards realpolitik policy-making. The author finds these laden with an inevitable sense of tragedy, which reflects Kissinger's pessimistic sensibility (p. 17). Gewen-a long-time editor of the New York Times Book Review-knows, perhaps better than anyone, exactly what constitutes a solid book. The inevitability of tragedy does not lose sight of its readers, and should be of interest both to students of Kissinger and to a broader audience, for whom Gewen elucidates the whimsical interplay between political philosophy, history, statecraft and diplomacy.