Years of Renewal (1st EDITION)

Author: Henry Kissinger 

Condition: Good. Wear and tear on jacket 

Hardcover 

Very rare first edition. A must have for readers of geopolitics and world affairs.

Perhaps the best-known American diplomatist and one of the shrewdest, best-informed, and most articulate figures ever to occupy a position of power in Washington.

The eagerly awaited third and final volume of his memoirs completes a major work of contemporary history. It begins with the resignation of Richard Nixon -- including Kissinger's final assessment of Nixon's tortured personality and the self-inflicted tragedy that ended his presidency and made Kissinger, for a time, the most powerful man in American government, as well as an intimate and definitive portrait of the man whom Kissinger knew perhaps more closely than anyone -- and then takes the reader through the years of Gerald Ford's administration, in which Kissinger continued to play a decisive role, both as Secretary of State and as the symbol of the continuity of American foreign policy. 

Kissinger details the agony of the final U.S. extrication from Vietnam -- with the rise of an increasingly hostile Congress determined to micromanage American foreign policy and the evisceration of the American intelligence community and its consequences for American power -- and takes us inside the White House to show our leaders in a time of crisis.

Indeed, crisis is what this book abounds in: the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam, the "Mayaguez" incident and the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, the origins of the war in Lebanon -- above all the continuing crisis of the Cold War at its perilous height. Here are brilliant scenes, as only an insider could write them, of the shaping of American foreign policy in the Ford era: the famous shuttle diplomacy by which Kissinger brought a wary Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat together to begin the return of the Sinai to Egypt and usher in the final reconciliation of Egypt and Israel, the Vladivostok meeting with Leonid Brezhnev that advanced the process of nuclear limitation, the uneasy dialogue with China, the tragedy of the Kurds, the search for European security and freedom -- all the major decisions, conferences, and crises that shaped the world we live in, and that still, in many cases, remain major areas of engagement for the United States.

Kissinger recounts in detail his visits to Africa, which led to major initiatives in Southern Africa, including the historic decision of the white settler government of Rhodesia to accept majority rule, and tells the story of U.S. policy in the Americas, including revealing accounts of policies toward Cuba and Chile in the 1970s.

Above all, here are intimate, candid, and sharply intelligent portraits of world leaders, from Mao Zedong teasing Kissinger with a characteristic mixture of brutality and acerbic subtlety, to Leonid Brezhnev, confused, unwell, desperately trying to conceal the Soviet Union's growing difficulties with a facade of blustering bravado, as well as a galaxy of European, Middle Eastern, Asian, Latin American, and African leaders. 

Oakmont Books | Rare, Pre-owned, Special Interest & Hard To Find Books | Non-Fiction | Australia & worldwide | Online