“The past really is another country. Gregg Herken’s intriguing volume is a
passport that enables us to visit the vanished country of Georgetown
during the Cold War. There the braided political and social networks of a
small cohort made, and reported, history.”

“Gregg Herken has diligently brought the old
Eastern Establishment back to life in The Georgetown Set. A whole host
of luminaries—Joseph Alsop, Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, Phil and Kay Graham among
them—make grand appearances in this group biography. Herken has connected the
dots between these so-called ‘Wise Men of the twentieth century’ better than
anybody else. An absolutely wonderful read!”

“Cold War America was largely shaped by a close-knit group of individuals
known as the ‘WASP ascendancy’: well-off, well-educated journalists,
politicians, and socialites who lived in Washington, DC’s Georgetown
neighborhood…Herken covers, among a host of post-WWII
milestones, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, the founding of the
CIA, McCarthyism, the Korean War, Vietnam, and Watergate. The skill with
which he describes the players in Georgetown is not to be missed.”

“Herken offers a fascinating, faintly nostalgic inside look at Washington’s Cold
War–era elites who defined America’s foreign policy while hosting
exclusive cocktail parties in upscale Georgetown…Dense and scholarly with over eleven hundred endnotes, this
work will delight committed lay readers and scholars interested in
political and diplomatic history, biography, and old-fashioned high
society scandal.”

“A meticulous Cold War historian, Herken here dissects the social and political interconnections
of prominent spies, diplomats, and journalists of Cold War Washington…Combining the social gatherings of the
Georgetown elite—the Eastern Establishment in concentrated form—and the
serious matters it impacted, such as CIA operations, the arms race, and
Vietnam, Herken provides an intimate perspective on Washington salons of
power. A solid, readable addition to Cold War scholarship.”

“Herken takes a rather clever idea promising
titillating gossip among neighbors Joseph Alsop, Phil Graham, and John F.
Kennedy during the 1950s and ’60s and amplifies it into a spiraling delineation
of the official American response to the perceived Soviet threat…An intricate
study of the personalities that shaped US Cold War policy.”

“An absolutely fascinating look into a world
that has long remained half hidden but was at the center of America’s postwar
global supremacy. This book was waiting to be written, and Gregg Herken delivers
with insight and panache.”