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Our man: Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American century

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Description
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography*
*Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography*
*Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize*

"Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it."—Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review
"By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this — sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself."—David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe

Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.
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ISBN:
9780307958020
9780307958037
9780525637844
9781984883278
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Grouping Information

Grouped Work ID8285a79f-5ee8-f2a8-103f-79dfe6c7583e
Grouping Titleour man richard holbrooke and the end of the american century
Grouping Authorgeorge packer
Grouping Categorybook
Grouping LanguageEnglish (eng)
Last Grouping Update2024-04-28 03:29:38AM
Last Indexed2024-04-28 03:38:07AM

Solr Fields

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author
Packer, George, 1960-
author_display
Packer, George
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detailed_location_catalog
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South Natomas
display_description
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography*
*Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography*
*Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize*

"Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it."—Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review
"By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this — sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself."—David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe

Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.
format_catalog
Book
Large Print
eAudiobook
eBook
format_category_catalog
Audio Books
Books
eBook
id
8285a79f-5ee8-f2a8-103f-79dfe6c7583e
isbn
9780307958020
9780307958037
9780525637844
9781984883278
itype_catalog
Adu Large Print
Adult Book Non-Fiction
Adult Fiction
last_indexed
2024-04-28T10:38:07.209Z
lexile_score
-1
literary_form
Non Fiction
literary_form_full
Non Fiction
local_callnumber_catalog
320.092 P119 2019
LARGE PRINT 973.91 P119 2019
owning_library_catalog
Sacramento Public Library
owning_location_catalog
Arden-Dimick
Carmichael
Central
Colonial Heights
Franklin
McKinley
North Natomas
North Sacramento-Hagginwood
Pocket-Greenhaven
Rio Linda
South Natomas
primary_isbn
9780307958020
publishDate
2019
publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Books on Tape
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Random House Large Print
recordtype
grouped_work
subject_facet
Ambassadors -- United States -- Biography
Diplomats -- United States -- Biography
Holbrooke, Richard C., -- 1941-2010
Large type books
Statesmen -- United States -- Biography
title_display
Our man : Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American century
title_full
Our Man Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
Our man : Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American century / George Packer
Our man [text (large print)] : Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American century / George Packer
title_short
Our man
title_sub
Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American century
topic_facet
Ambassadors
Biography & Autobiography
Diplomats
History
Holbrooke, Richard C
Nonfiction
Politics
Statesmen

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