The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War [Paperback]

Only two Americans held positions of great influence throughout the Cold War. The two men embodied opposing strategies for winning the conflict. Yet they dined together, attended the weddings of each other's children, and remained lifelong friends.

Paul Nitze was a consummate insider who believed the best way to avoid a nuclear clash was to prepare to win one. George Kennan was a diplomat turned academic whose famous X article persuasively argued that we should contain the Soviet Union while waiting for it to collapse from within. A masterly double biography,The Hawk and the Dove does an inspired job of telling the story of the Cold War through the careers of two of its most interesting and important figures (The Washington Monthly).

Nicholas Thompson is an editor at Wired magazine, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and a regular contributor to CNN. He has written articles for The New York Times, The Washington Post and numerous other publications. A grandson of Paul Nitze's, he lives in New York City with his wife and son.

May be the most important political biography in recent memory. The Washington Times

The book is brimming with fascinating revelations about the men and the harrowing events they steered through. The New York Times

In this important and astute new study, Nitze emerges as a driven patriot and Kennan as a darkly conflicted and prophetic one. The Washington Post

Paul Nitze and George Kennan were the yin and yang of American foreign policy. They were also the only figures deeply involved in the Cold War from beginning to end, and so they make ideal focal points for Nicholas Thompson's lively and illuminating book. Newsweek

Few men did more to shape postwar U.S. Foreign policy than Paul Nitze and George Kennan. In tracing their dueling visions of America's role in the world, Nicholas Thompson provides a white-knuckle glimpse inside the 20tlC!