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Podcast: New Books in American Politics
Episode: On âHenry Kissinger and His Worldâ with author Barry Gewen
Description: In my talk with Barry Gewen on his 2020 book, The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (W. W. Norton, 2020), we explore the disparate influences that shaped Kissinger as both an intellectual and as a practitioner of power. Our conversation touches on Kissingerâs upbringing in a German-Jewish community in Bavaria at the time of Hitlerâs rise to power and pivots to an understanding of Kissingerâs Realism as his pessimistic yet unwavering approach to foreign affairs and exigencies like the balance of power. In his committed opposition to the Wilsonian creedâthe missionary idea of Americaâs...