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Acheson
The Secretary of
State Who Created the American World
by James Chase
- Commentary, Patrick Glynn
The time is ripe for James Chace's authoritative and
highly readable biography. Acheson is a recent enough
figure that many who knew him remain alive, and Chace has
been able to draw on personal conversations with his
subject's contemporaries and children. The opening of
archives in both Washington and Moscow has also served
Chace well, giving him the advantage of near-perfect
hindsight. The result is not only a superb policy
biography but also a three-dimensional portrait of the
man. Chace's narrative, though very admiring, is not
entirely uncritical. Still, his policy judgments
generally follow those of the liberal establishment and,
mostly, Acheson's own, even when questionable. It is
hard, for example, to second Acheson's, and Chace's, view
that by consigning Chiang Kai-shek and Taiwan to the
tender mercies of the Communist Chinese, we could have
opened a productive relationship with Mao. By contrast,
Chace's views of the Soviet problem--mirroring
Acheson's--are generally without illusion. True to the
biographer's art, Chace makes his judgments with a light
hand, giving the reader all the evidence needed to make a
determination of his own.
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