This fascinating, behind-the-scenes history of postwar Washington is a rich and colorful portrait of the close-knit group of journalists, spies, and government officials who waged the Cold War over cocktails and dinner.
In the years after World War II, Georgetown's leafy streets were home to an unlikely group of cold warriors: a coterie of affluent, well-educated, and well-connected civilians who helped steer American strategy from the Marshall Plan through McCarthyism, Vietnam, and the endgame of Watergate. This Georgetown set included Phil and Kay Graham, husband-and-wife publishers of the Washington Post; Joe and Stewart Alsop, odd-couple brothers who were among the country's premier political pundits; Frank Wisner, a driven, manic-depressive lawyer in charge of CIA covert operations; and a host of diplomats, spies, and scholars. It was a time when presidents made foreign policy in consultation with reporters and professors—often over martinis and hors d'oeuvres—and columnists like the Alsops promoted those policies in the next day's newspapers.
Gregg Herken illuminates the drama of these years and brings this remarkable roster of men and women and their world not only out into the open but vividly to life.
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“A meticulous Cold War historian, Herken here dissects the social and political interconnections
of prominent spies, diplomats, and journalists of Cold War Washington…Combining the social gatherings of the
Georgetown elite—the Eastern Establishment in concentrated form—and the
serious matters it impacted, such as CIA operations, the arms race, and
Vietnam, Herken provides an intimate perspective on Washington salons of
power. A solid, readable addition to Cold War scholarship.”
—
Booklist