
Our Man
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**WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2019**
**FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2020**
Richard Holbrooke was one of the most legendary and complicated figures in recent American history. Brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites, he was both admired and detested. 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. 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. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted.
Holbrooke's story is the story of the rise and fall 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. Drawing on Holbrooke's diaries and papers, George Packer's narrative 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.
A GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES, SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR
Reviews / Votes
Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory... Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... Our Man not only revitalizes but in some ways reinvents the art of journalistic biography... If you could read only one book to comprehend America's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it. * New York Times * Rarely in recent years has a work of non-fiction so clearly, ruthlessly, compassionately shown such a prominent person's life from the inside out. It is a masterwork about diplomacy, government and the world. * Guardian, *Books of the Year* * Holbrooke in all his capacious brilliance and arrogance has been captured by George Packer... [Our Man] is, I strongly feel, a classic. * Washington Post * Outstanding... Our Man is one of the most fascinating dissections of US power - its strengths and serious weaknesses - I've read. * Guardian * Packer is one of the most talented non-fiction writers in the US. In his hands, a biography of a diplomat who never quite made it to the top becomes a history of modern America's entanglement with the world. * Financial Times, *Books of the Year* * You may ask yourself, is it worth one of the best American non-fiction writers producing a book of just under 600 pages on an arrogant and abrasive egotist whose highest sustained rank in the State Department was that of a lowly assistant secretary? The answer is unabashedly yes. This is a remarkable work about a remarkable, if deeply flawed, statesman whose career was intimately intertwined with the 50 years of American decline from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Nearly all biographies have long, boring stretches you want to skip. This one has none... A fascinating and compulsive read. * Spectator * Our Man is a great, exuberant read, gossipy and thoughtful, about a remarkable American diplomat who tried to place himself at the heart of some of the bloodiest, most intractable wars of our age: Vietnam, Bosnia and Afghanistan... Packer displays his talents as a master of narrative reconstruction. * The Times * Dazzling... an exploration of American decline that's heartfelt, virtuosic and quietly thoughtful at the same time... Packer marshals a huge amount of material with great aplomb... His prose fizzes with almost Holbrookian levels of energy. * Telegraph * Deeply researched, compelling... Our Man is not just a portrait of a fascinating historical figure, it is a contemplation of a half century of US foreign and security policy and its most intractable challenges. * Observer * George Packer [is] arguably the most renowned American journalist of his generation... Our Man may be the most vivid tour of America's foreign delusions that has been offered since the Vietnam War. * London Review of Books *More details
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