Overview

There were two George F. Kennans. The first was the well-known diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia - a tough political realist and man of the world who gained fame as the theorist of America's Cold War 'containment' strategy. This was a 'persona' which Kennan adopted in order to carry out his professional responsibilities. The second, largely unknown but real George Kennan was a writer and aesthete - a shy, lonely man who felt alienated from both his country and his times, and a man who made major contributions to American literature.Thus argues Lee Congdon in """"George Kennan: A Writing Life"""", a groundbreaking study of Kennan's life and thought. Congdon narrates Kennan's legendary work in the foreign service, his later career as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, and the schools of thought to which he made significant contributions: political realism, antidemocratic social and political criticism, Spenglerian gloom, and conservative cultural analysis. Congdon concludes that notwithstanding his great accomplishments as a diplomat and geo-political strategist, Kennan merits consideration above all else as an original and penetrating American writer.

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9781933859712

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Lee Congdon is Professor Emeritus of History at James Madison University, where he taught for thirty-three years. He is the author of a trilogy on twentieth-century Hungarian intellectuals and coeditor of two volumes on the Hungarian Revolution. In 1999 the Republic of Hungary decorated him with its Order of Merit. Congdon was a Visiting Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1981-82, and a Summer Visitor at the institute in 2007. He has written hundreds of articles, essays, and reviews on history, philosophy, literature, politics, and baseball.

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