This authoritative biography of George F. Kennan is more than simply the life story of a prominent public figure: It is also a history of the Cold War viewed from the perspective of its most influential strategist and as interpreted by our most distinguished historian of the conflict that divided the world for more than four decades. The collaboration between these two seminal thinkers—Kennan and John Lewis Gaddis—has produced a volume that should be a must-read for every serious student of the Cold War and international politics.

George F. Kennan: An American Life is a work that was long in gestation in the minds of both its subject and author.1Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University and the author of several path-breaking books on the Cold War, began work on this project in 1982 when Kennan, aware of Gaddis’s writings, agreed to cooperate in the preparation of his biography, with the implied understanding that the work would be published only after his death. Kennan, then seventy-eight, provided Gaddis with access to his private papers, correspondence, and diaries, the latter a hoard of personal information that Kennan had begun to compile as a schoolboy in Milwaukee and which Gaddis draws upon to great effect in reconstructing the evolution of Kennan’s thought and untangling his complex psychology. Over the years Gaddis conducted periodic interviews with Kennan himself, and also spoke to family members, friends, and old-time colleagues. Perhaps to the surprise of both subject and