"Kissinger analyses the lives of six ... leaders through the distinctive strategies of statecraft, which he believes they embodied. After the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer brought defeated and morally bankrupt Germany back into the community of nations by what Kissinger calls 'the strategy of humility.' Charles de Gaulle set France beside the victorious Allies and renewed its historic grandeur by 'the strategy of will.' During the Cold War, Richard...

"United States foreign policy is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Institutions of diplomacy and development are reeling from deep budget cuts. The diplomats who make America's deals and protect its citizens around the world are walking out in droves. Offices across the State Department sit empty, while abroad the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. In a journey from the corridors of power in Washington,...

"In the wake of the Watergate scandal, the United States was coming apart. America had experienced a decade of tragic assassinations, followed by the unexpected resignation of first a Vice President and then a President of the United States. A new and dangerous cynicism swept the country--a mood that, in some ways, lingers today. Into that divide stepped an unexpected, unelected, and largely unknown American--Gerald R. Ford. Before taking office as...

"Great leaders made the twentieth century safer and more peaceful. In The Peacemakers, a kind of global edition of John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, Bruce Jentleson shows how key figures in the previous century rewrote the zero-sum and transactional scripts they were handed and successfully prevented conflict, advanced human rights, and promoted global sustainability. Covering a broad range of historical examples, from Yitzhak Rabin's efforts...