Kissinger; 1973, The Crucial Year

New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 2009. First Simon & Schuster Hardcover Edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvii, [2], 457, [3] pages. Includes Foreword, Acknowledgments, Illustrations. Footnotes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper; inscription reads: For Kathren, with very much love, Alistair Horne, June 09. Notes, Bibliography, and Index. Chapters include A Very Odd Couple; The Black Hole: Vietnam; The Opening to China; A Feather-Brained Crime; The Year of Europe; Storm Clouds over the Middle East; Coming to Grips with the Polar Bear; A Long Hot Summer; To Secretary of State; A Dagger Pointing at the Heart of Antarctica; The War of Atonement; The Crisis: DEFCON 3; To Sadat; On to China; To Geneva and Shuttle; The Awful Grace of God; and Aftermath. Sir Alistair Allan Horne CBE FRSL (9 November 1925 - 25 May 2017) was a British journalist, biographer and historian, especially of 19th and 20th century France. He wrote more than 20 books on history, and biography. He was the official biographer of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 received the Hawthornden Prize in 1963. Horne's 1977 book A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 received the Wolfson Prize in 1978. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 came to be of much interest to military officers, having been recommended to President George W. Bush by Kissinger. Horne was offered the authorship of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's official biography but declined due to the daunting amount of work involved and his age and opted instead to write a volume on one year in Kissinger's life (Kissinger: 1973, The Crucial Year). Based on full access to the subject and his papers, Kissinger is an intimate portrait of a man, a country, and a presidency at a critical point. From the blowup in the Middle East, to detente with Russia, to the opening of the door to China, the United States' response to the pivotal events of 1973--and Kissinger's crucial role in the formulating of that response--continues to shape and influence United States foreign policy. Derived from Publishers Weekly: Oxford University historian Horne presents a snapshot of America's controversial superdiplomat in this admiring biographical study. The year 1973 ran Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon's chief foreign policy adviser, ragged with such watersheds as the Paris Peace Treaty with North Vietnam, the Chileans' overthrow of president Salvador Allende and the Yom Kippur War; he also won the Nobel Peace Prize, was appointed secretary of state and launched détente with the Soviets. Horne's portrait, heavily informed by its ever-accessible subject, presents Kissinger as the single most powerful man in the world as his epic negotiations, intricately recounted here, resolved crisis after crisis while the Nixon White House dithered over Watergate. Horne defends Kissinger from those who accuse him of war crimes and others who claim he was soft on Russia; he absolves Kissinger of responsibility for the Chilean coup, and blames congressional doves and a fifth column of antiwar activists for handing Indochina over to communism. The author doesn't question the continuing relevance of Kissinger's Metternichian balance-of-superpowers vision.