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George F. Kennan: An American Life

Biography of George F. Kennan written by John Lewis Gaddis

Summary

Biography of George F. Kennan written by John Lewis Gaddis

Field	Value
name	George F. Kennan: An American Life
image	George F Kennan - An American Life.jpg
image_size	197px
author	John Lewis Gaddis
country	United States
language	English
genre	Biography
publisher	W. W. Norton & Company
release_date	November 10, 2011 (hardcover)
September 3, 2012 (paperback)
pages	800
isbn	978-1594203121

September 3, 2012 (paperback) George F. Kennan: An American Life is a nonfiction book about U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan by John Lewis Gaddis that won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography

Pulitzer.org describes this as "an engaging portrait of a globetrotting diplomat whose complicated life was interwoven with the Cold War and America’s emergence as the world’s dominant power". In April 2012 and after the Pulitzer prize was announced, Jonathan Haslam of The Guardian presented its review as a discussion of a "Pulitzer-winning life of an opponent of McCarthy and George Bush".{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/17/george-f-kennan-american-life-review|title=George F Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis - review: A Pulitzer-winning life of an opponent of McCarthy and George Bush

According to a review in The Economist, the circumstances of the biography were that Gaddis began conducting interviews and accumulating papers from Kennan in 1981 with the expectation that a posthumous biography would be published. Kennan was 78 at the time, but he did not die until 2005, which changed the context in which the book was published due to contemporaneous concerns about "economic misery and questions about the future of American dominance in international affairs". Kennan granted access on the condition that the publication be posthumous.

Gideon Rachman of The Financial Times describes Kennan as "a rare example of a diplomat who changed history through the power of his ideas and the clarity of his writing". Kissinger reminds us that "the highest position he ever held was ambassador to Moscow for five months in 1952 and to Yugoslavia for two years in the early 1960s".

Gaddis' book was also reviewed by Frank Costigliola in The New York Review of Books,{{cite journal |author=Frank Costigliola |year=2011 by John Gray in the New Statesman,{{cite journal |author-link=John N. Gray by Alex Danchev in Times Higher Education,{{cite journal and by Rajiv Bhatia in The Hindu.{{cite news |author=Rajiv Bhatia

On April 16, 2012, it was announced that the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography would be awarded for George F. Kennan: An American Life.

References

(2011). "George F. Kennan: An American Life [Hardcover]".
(2012). "George F. Kennan: An American Life [Paperback]".
"The 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Biography or Autobiography". Pulitzer.org.
(March 9, 2012). "National Book Critics Circle honors Gaddis for biography of Cold War statesman".
Kissinger, Henry. (November 10, 2011). "The Age of Kennan". [[The New York Times]].
Kaplan, Fred. (November 22, 2011). "America's Cold War Sage and His Discontents". [[The New York Times]].
(November 12, 2011). "History of diplomacy: Dealing with the enemy". [[The Economist]].
Rachman, Gideon. (November 18, 2011). "George F Kennan". [[The Financial Times]].
Columbia University Office of Communication and Public Affairs (April 16, 2012). [http://www.pulitzer.org/files/2012/longlist2012.pdf COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY ANNOUNCES 96th ANNUAL PULITZER PRIZES IN JOURNALISM, LETTERS, DRAMA AND MUSIC] (accessed December 29, 2012)

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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