Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Acheson, Dean

ISBN 10: 039307448X / ISBN 13: 9780393074482

Published by W W Norton & Co Inc, 1969

About this Item

Dust jacket is chipped. Text has some minimal markings. Binding is tight and secure. ***Shipped within 24 hours from the beautiful Baltimore inner harbor area. First class service; accurate descriptions. Most items packed in boxes, not envelopes.***.

Seller Inventory # 004165

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication Date: 1969
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039307448X
• ISBN 13: 9780393074482
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

The author relates his experiences in the State Department during a period that witnessed World War II, European reconstruction, the Korean War and McCarthyism

Review

Dean Acheson joined the U.S. Department of State in 1941 as an assistant secretary for economic affairs. Shortly after the end of World War II, he attempted to resign, but was persuaded to come back as under secretary of state; Harry Truman eventually rewarded Acheson's loyalty by picking him to run the State Department during his second term (1949 to 1953).

"The period covered in this book was one of great obscurity to those who lived through it," Acheson wrote at the beginning of his memoirs, first published in 1969. "The period was marked by the disappearance of world powers and empires ... and from this wreckage emerged a multiplicity of states, most of them new, all of them largely underdeveloped politically and economically. Overshadowing all loomed two dangers to all--the Soviet Union's new-found power and expansive imperialism, and the development of nuclear weapons." Present at the Creation is a densely detailed account of Acheson's diplomatic career, delineated in intricately eloquent prose. Going over the origins of the cold war--the drawing of lines among the superpowers in Europe, the conflict in Korea--Acheson discusses how he and his colleagues came to realize "that the whole world structure and order that we had inherited from the nineteenth century was gone," and that the old methods of foreign policy would no longer apply. Among the accolades Acheson garnered for his candid self-assessment was the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for history.