Sketches from a Life - Softcover

Kennan, George F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393321398 ISBN 13: 9780393321395

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000

Synopsis

Written originally as a series of entries in a travel diary and now considered one of the most important memoirs of our time, Sketches from a Life is George F. Kennan's peerless, impressionistic record of his experiences with twentieth-century history.

Beginning with his first foreign service post in 1927 and ending seven decades later, Kennan's account is rich with the insight of a major historical participant. Whether relating the perils of Hitler's Germany or revisiting Kennan's days as ambassador to the Soviet Union, Sketches from a Life is as riveting as great literature, and one of the most invaluable documents of our time.

About this title

About the Author:

George F. Kennan was America’s most acclaimed Cold War diplomat as well as a prize-winning historian and author.

From Publishers Weekly:

Wistful and wise, these travel notes distilled from a long career in diplomatic service and private wanderlust reveal Kennan as a citizen of the world, though one who may be truly at home nowhere. Formerly an ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and to Yugoslavia, the author of The Fateful Alliance and 17 other books here reviles the Soviet system and takes to task the Europeans, who have lost control of their own destiny and are busily destroying their environment. In the U.S., he struggles to reconnect with his Wisconsin and rural Pennsylvania roots; then he hops to southern California, epitome of "childhood without the promise of maturity." Early diary entries fitfully record his bleak stays in Berlin and Moscow in the 1930s and '40s, the devastation of Europe during and after the war. Frequently impersonal, this travelogue is at its best in exquisite word-paintings that capture the spirit and significance of a time and place, whether a Florida key, African grasslands, Fez's maze-like streets, Baghdad, Mexico City, the isle of Capri.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0393321398
• ISBN 13: 9780393321395
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384