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Kissinger
- Author
- Walter Isaacson
- Narrator
- Malcolm Hillgartner
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 10 July 2013
- Run Time
- 34 hours 30 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to a Gallup poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world's imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists. Kissinger explores the relationship between this complex man's personality and the foreign policy he pursued. Drawing on extensive interviews with Kissinger as well as 150 other sources, including US presidents and his business clients, this first full-length biography makes use of many of Kissinger's private papers and classified memos to tell his uniquely American story. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that follows this grandly colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his later years as a globe-trotting business consultant.
Critics Review
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“Kissinger is a triumph. Isaacon writes…with sympathy, verve, imagination, insight, and a keen eye. A stunning achievement.”
Stephen E. Ambrose, #1 New York Times bestselling author
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“Confirms Kissinger’s place as one of the great international players and takes him down a peg as well…Kissinger will rave about the parts he likes and rage about the rest…This makes for compulsive reading.”
Peter Jennings
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“In its range and research, it is the book to end all books on Mr. Kissinger. For his aficionados, it makes compulsive reading; for students of his years of influence on United States foreign policy, it is compulsory.”
New York Times
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“Mr. Isaacson's work is a model of insight, delicacy, and fairness that moves at a lively pace through recent American history and re-creates, inconsiderable depth, the intellectuals and politicians who formed its foreign policy.”
New Yorker
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“[A] wonderful, entertaining, definitive biography.”
Los Angeles Times Book Review
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“Meticulously researched, intelligent, and fair…A book full of insights.”
Washington Post
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“A solidly researched, richly textured, and extremely readable account of a man in dramatic times who seemed bigger than life.”
Boston Sunday Globe
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“The fullest account of Kissinger’s life and career to date, other than for his memoirs…A spooky, engrossing portrait of the only European-style realist ever to guide US foreign policy.”
Publishers Weekly
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“This biography of Henry Kissinger is enhanced by Malcolm Hillgartner’s outstanding narration. His delivery is lively, and he’s a great storyteller—no half-bored professor intoning a history lecture here…The lengthy book presents a full portrait of Kissinger in all his egotistical, power-grubbing, brilliant complexity. It covers everything from his German childhood to his family’s flight from the Nazis, his college years, and his rise to power as a controversial secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations.”
AudioFile
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“As a commanding opus for the present, enlivened by snippets from hundreds of interviews, Isaacson raises a high bar for any historians who challenge him.”
Booklist
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“Isaacson…has produced much more than another unauthorized biography…While there are other excellent Kissinger biographies, this work is the best to date on Henry K. Superstar.”
Library Journal
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“A critical but resolutely objective and utterly fascinating biography of the guileful, egocentric geopolitical scientist who became America’s most celebrated secretary of state…An authoritative and comprehensive account…An evenhanded, warts-and-all portrait of a larger-than-life individual who has left his mark behind.”
Kirkus Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Walter Isaacson
- Narrator
- Malcolm Hillgartner
- Duration
- 34 hours 30 minutes
- Release Date
- 10 July 2013
- ISBN
- 9781483073569
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Biography: historical, political and military, Biography: general, Biography: historical, political and military, Political leaders and leadership, History of the Americas, History of the Americas
Synopsis
By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to a Gallup poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world's imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists. Kissinger explores the relationship between this complex man's personality and the foreign policy he pursued. Drawing on extensive interviews with Kissinger as well as 150 other sources, including US presidents and his business clients, this first full-length biography makes use of many of Kissinger's private papers and classified memos to tell his uniquely American story. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that follows this grandly colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his later years as a globe-trotting business consultant.
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