Zbig
- Author Edward Luce
- Narrator Michael David Axtell
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 13 May 2025
- Run Time 23 hours and 25 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Biography: historical, political and military, Geopolitics.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents Zbig by Edward Luce, read by Michael David Axtell
'For anyone who wants to understand the history of America and the world, this is a useful and important book' ANNE APPLEBAUM
'A biographer of genius ... One of the sharpest political pens of our day' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
'A towering achievement. A book which is founded on deep scholarship, yet so accessible and readable from the very beginning that it feels more like a historical detective story' RAGEH OMAAR
Zbigniew Brzezinski was a political strategist who rose to prominence as an intellectual architect of US foreign policy during the Cold War. As National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and a trusted advisor to US presidents from John F. Kennedy onwards, Brzezinski’s expertise helped shape global strategy at critical moments - most significantly as a key figure in the downfall of the Soviet Union.
A Polish émigré who witnessed the devastation of his homeland during both Nazi and Soviet occupations, Brzezinski became one of the West’s foremost scholars of totalitarianism. His nuanced understanding of the importance of ‘speaking the enemy’s language’, coupled with his close friendship with Pope John Paul II was instrumental in preventing a Soviet invasion of Poland. While Nixon and Kissinger, his lifelong rival, famously opened China to the West in the early 1970s, it was Brzezinski and Carter who strengthened US-China relations, further shifting the global balance of power away from Moscow. Beyond the Cold War, Brzezinski continued to influence foreign policy, notably in shaping the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks. Yet his legacy remains underreported, leaving gaps in our understanding of Cold War history and its aftermath.
Edward Luce, celebrated columnist and political writer, restores Brzezinski’s rightful place in history. Through a sweeping narrative that spans much of the 20th century, Zbig offers a gripping account of Brzezinski’s life and, in doing so, narrates a compelling re-examination of the end of the Cold War.
'For anyone who wants to understand the history of America and the world, this is a useful and important book' ANNE APPLEBAUM
'A biographer of genius ... One of the sharpest political pens of our day' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
'A towering achievement. A book which is founded on deep scholarship, yet so accessible and readable from the very beginning that it feels more like a historical detective story' RAGEH OMAAR
Zbigniew Brzezinski was a political strategist who rose to prominence as an intellectual architect of US foreign policy during the Cold War. As National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and a trusted advisor to US presidents from John F. Kennedy onwards, Brzezinski’s expertise helped shape global strategy at critical moments - most significantly as a key figure in the downfall of the Soviet Union.
A Polish émigré who witnessed the devastation of his homeland during both Nazi and Soviet occupations, Brzezinski became one of the West’s foremost scholars of totalitarianism. His nuanced understanding of the importance of ‘speaking the enemy’s language’, coupled with his close friendship with Pope John Paul II was instrumental in preventing a Soviet invasion of Poland. While Nixon and Kissinger, his lifelong rival, famously opened China to the West in the early 1970s, it was Brzezinski and Carter who strengthened US-China relations, further shifting the global balance of power away from Moscow. Beyond the Cold War, Brzezinski continued to influence foreign policy, notably in shaping the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks. Yet his legacy remains underreported, leaving gaps in our understanding of Cold War history and its aftermath.
Edward Luce, celebrated columnist and political writer, restores Brzezinski’s rightful place in history. Through a sweeping narrative that spans much of the 20th century, Zbig offers a gripping account of Brzezinski’s life and, in doing so, narrates a compelling re-examination of the end of the Cold War.
Critics Review
Zbig is a magnificent and highly readable chronicle of the life and times of one of the most important American strategists of the 20th century, written with an appreciative eye for both the man and the politics of the time he helped to shape
This is the best book ever written about a national security advisor. It’s also by far the best biography on Brzezinski – a towering figure in American foreign policy
With Zbig, Edward Luce, one of the sharpest political pens of our day, has shown himself to be, in addition, a biographer of genius
One of the great US strategists of the Cold War and its aftermath. He … proved prescient in his fear that the US and Europe would squander the opportunity presented by the fall of communism to build a new world order. In Vladimir Putin, he recognised the West’s Nemesis earlier than almost anyone else. Ed Luce’s meticulous and engaging biography is beautifully balanced. He leaves you in no doubt how desperately we lack the new generation of geopolitical strategic thinkers who can boast Zbig’s acuity and prescience
A brilliant architect of the American Century, Zbigniew Brzezinski deserves a brilliant biography, and Ed Luce has given us just that: a sensitive, deeply researched and fair-minded portrait of a man who had a remarkable journey and has left America, and the world, the most significant of legacies
Ed Luce's Zbig is not only the definitive biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, a crucial figure in the history of the Cold War, but also a book with real insights into the nature of power - especially the ways in which intellectual valour and good faith can come into conflict with the ugly realities of the world. For anyone who wants to understand the history of America and the world, this is a useful and important book
Zbig is a brilliant study of an American statesman, a compelling biography of both a man and a moment, the beginning of the end of the Cold War. What Kissinger, his friend and rival, was to Republicans in the 1970s, Brzezinski was to the Democrats – a formidable intellect and advocate who saw the Soviet threat more clearly than most in the upper echelons of power in Washington. This is history that matters more than ever today, given the resurgent threat from Russia, powerfully rendered by the great Ed Luce
Zbig is an astonishing biography that will change the way history looks at Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Cold War. Drawing on Brzezinski’s previously secret personal diaries, Luce shows the reader how this brilliant Polish-American foresaw the coming decline of the Soviet Union – and used every tool of American policy to make sure it happened. Luce explains how time after time Brzezinski got the big issues right – from Russia and China and the Middle East. But he’s also searingly honest about Brzezinski's flaws – his intellectual arrogance and sometimes ruthless ambition. Through Brzezinski's life, he was constantly compared to his émigré intellectual twin, Henry Kissinger. Readers of this book will likely conclude that Zbig was the true visionary
A towering achievement. A book which vividly captures the life of one the world’s foreign policy titans of the last 60 years. Founded on deep scholarship, yet so accessible and readable from the very beginning that it feels more like a historical detective story. Luce meticulously records how over decades Brzezinski refused to go along with the conventions of Washington’s political salons and how his granite hard determination forged a strategic vision of America’s challenge to authoritarianism around the world and principally the Soviet Union
Edward Luce has written an impressive account of Brzezinski’s life in vivid colours, having had access to the man himself in life and his diaries and papers since his death. No biography of Brzezinski is likely to surpass this one in empathy … A long but enthralling biography
Luce’s Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski ... is a highly readable reminder of how US and global politics looked and felt before the cold war ended. Brzezinski is portrayed vividly, warts and all. Deeply and meticulously researched, Zbig lays out its subject’s ascent, the tumult of the Carter years and what followed
A landmark study unlikely to be equalled. This is a high-definition account of one of the great - and most neglected - postwar statesman and strategists, who helped to shape the end of the Soviet Union ... That there have been such very long tails to the Carter presidency’s calculations and miscalculations – in eastern Europe, Iran and Afghanistan – speaks loudly of a time when big brains played big dice on the Cold War Risk board of the world. Luce’s exceptional study vividly revives the memory, strategies, tactics and foibles of one of the greatest players of that lethal game
Zbig is a pleasure to read ... Luce does a wonderful job reconstructing old policy debates in all their nuance ... Many events in this book, from the Middle East struggles to relations with Moscow, chime with crises occurring today … Brzezinski’s diligence and his confidence in his adopted homeland may seem almost quaint by current standards, but we could use more of those traits, and more people like him, today
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