Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Acheson, Dean

ISBN 10: 039307448X / ISBN 13: 9780393074482

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York, 1969

About this Item

xvii, [1], 798 pages. Illustrations. Notes. References. Index. DJ soiled, creased, & scuffed: small tears/chips, small pieces missing. Inscribed and signed by the author (Dean Acheson); small smear in the inscription. Dean Gooderham Acheson (April 11, 1893 - October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. . Dean Acheson joined the Department of State in 1941 as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and, with brief intermissions, was continuously involved until 1953, when he left office at the end of the Truman years. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the Foreign policy of the Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was Truman's main foreign policy advisor 1945-1947, especially regarding the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. After 1949 Acheson came under partisan political attack from Republicans led by Senator Joseph McCarthy over Truman's policy toward the People's Republic of China. As a private citizen in 1968 he counseled President Lyndon B. Johnson to negotiate for peace with North Vietnam. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy called upon Acheson for advice, bringing him into the executive committee (ExComm), a strategic advisory group. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. With deft portraits of many world figures, Dean Acheson analyzes the processes of policy making, the necessity for decision, and the role of power and initiative in matters of state. Throughout Acheson's time with the State Department, his was one of the most influential minds and strongest wills at work. It was a period that included World War II, the reconstruction of Europe, the Korean War, the development of nuclear power, the formation of the United Nations and NATO. It involved him at close quarters with a cast that starred Truman, Roosevelt, Churchill, de Gaulle, Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Attlee, Eden Bevin, Schuman, Dulles, de Gasperi, Adenauer, Yoshida, Vishinsky, and Molotov. Seller Inventory # 57090

Bibliographic Details

Title: Present at the Creation: My Years in the ...

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York

Publication Date: 1969

Binding: Hardcover

Illustrator: Jim Keith (Author photograph)

Condition: Good

Dust Jacket Condition: fair

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: Fourth Printing.

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.