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As participant and observer, George F. Kennan has left an indelible mark on more than six decades of this century. In this new volume of essays, reviews, and speeches--as in his recent bestseller, "Around the Cragged Hill"--Kennan reflects on the forces that have gone wildly out of control in this tragic century. As Kennan writes, "There was during the Cold War a fairly widespread belief in military and hardline circles that the great dictatorships, supported as they were by modern highly armed police establishments and by a total monopolization of the media of communication, had reduced entire peoples to a state of abject and cowering subordination....Such a system, it was thought, was subject to no seriously disruptive internal forces. Barring overpowering hostile outside influences, itcould be maintained indefinitely. It could be put to an end only by massive military attack. "The strong premonition of impending change in Russia that found expression in certain of the papers in this book served as evidence of the incorrectness of that view....They suggest that a greater sensitivity to the actual conditions of Soviet Society might have served us better than did the essentially military preoccupation of the Cold War enthusiasts." The papers in this volume not primarily concerned with Russia, in Kennan's words, "flit like fireflies around the edges of the great happenings...but each of them was designed to have its own small incandescence....If then, something like a broader view of this present disturbing age--of its dangers, its enigmas, and its possibilities--were to make its way through the variety of smaller vistas, so much the better."

"...there is much to be learned here of Kennan's principal subject, the former Soviet Union and the Russia it inhabited, and about Kennan himself....the current collection attests to his articulateness and narrative skill on a broad range of subjects."

Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post Book World, 02/25/1996

"Everything is well written...the book justifies its journey across the Atlantic. Kennan's years of study have ripened the experience of his diplomatic career."

Arthur M. Schlesinger

At a Century's Ending: Reflections, 1982-1995: Search Results