NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An intimate and masterful biography of Zbigniew BrzezinskiPresident Carters national security advisor and one of Americas leading geopolitical thinkersfrom one of the finest columnists and political writers at work today.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Unions demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsawthe heart of central Europes bloodlandsBrzezinski turned his fierce resentment at his homelands razing by Nazi Germany and the Red Army into a lifelong quest for liberty. Born the year that Joseph Stalin consolidated power, and dying a few months into Donald Trumps first presidency, Brzezinski was shaped by and in turn shaped the global power struggles of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As counsel to US presidents from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, and chief foreign policy figure of the late 1970s under Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski converted his acclaim as a Sovietologist into Washington power. With Henry Kissinger, his lifelong rival with whom he had a fraught on-off relationship, he personified the new breed of foreign-born scholar who thrived in Americas Cold War Universityand who ousted Washingtons gentlemanly class of WASPs who had run US foreign policy for so long.
Brzezinskis impact, aided by his unusual friendship with the Polish-born John Paul II, sprang from his knowledge of Moscows Achilles heelthe fact that its nationalities, such as the Ukrainians, and satellite states, including Poland, yearned to shake off Moscows grip. Neither a hawk nor a dove, Brzezinski was a biting critic of George W. Bushs Iraq War and an early endorser of Obama. Because he went against the DC grain of joining factions, and was on occasion willing to drop Democrats for Republicans, Brzezinski is something of historys orphan. His historic role has been greatly underweighted. In the almost cinematic arc of his life can be found the grand narrative of the American century and great power struggle that followed.
