A short life of the author
Henry Alfred Kissinger (27 May 1923 – 29 November 2023) was a German-born American diplomat, political scientist, and author who served as National Security Advisor (1969–1975) and Secretary of State (1973–1977) under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and who shaped American foreign policy during one of the most consequential and morally contested periods of the Cold War. His books — spanning academic political science, diplomatic history, and massive political memoirs — constitute one of the most substantial bodies of work on statecraft by any practitioner of the twentieth century.
Life
Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fürth, Bavaria, the son of a Jewish schoolteacher. His family fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and settled in New York. Kissinger served in the U.S. Army during World War II (in the Counter Intelligence Corps), returned to the United States after the war, and attended Harvard on the GI Bill. He earned his B.A. summa cum laude, his M.A., and his Ph.D. at Harvard, where his doctoral dissertation — published as A World Restored (1957) — analysed the diplomacy of Metternich and Castlereagh at the Congress of Vienna.
He joined the Harvard faculty and became a prominent public intellectual through Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957), which argued for the possibility of limited nuclear war as an alternative to the doctrine of massive retaliation. In 1968, he was appointed National Security Advisor by President Nixon.
Statecraft
Kissinger’s foreign policy — conducted in partnership with Nixon — was based on realpolitik: the pursuit of national interest through balance-of-power diplomacy, unencumbered by ideological considerations. His major achievements include the opening to China (1971–1972), détente with the Soviet Union (the SALT I treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), the negotiation of the Paris Peace Accords that ended American involvement in Vietnam (for which he shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Lê Đức Thọ, who declined it), and shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
His most controversial actions include the secret bombing of Cambodia (1969–1970), support for the military coup in Chile that overthrew Salvador Allende (1973), acquiescence to Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor (1975), and the “tilt” toward Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971). These actions have been the subject of sustained moral and legal criticism — Christopher Hitchens’s The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001) argued that Kissinger should be prosecuted for war crimes.
The Books
A World Restored (1957) — his dissertation — analyses how Metternich and Castlereagh rebuilt the European order after Napoleon. It is an academic work but also, in retrospect, a blueprint for Kissinger’s own approach to diplomacy: stability through balance, the subordination of idealism to order.
White House Years (1979), Years of Upheaval (1982), and Years of Renewal (1999) — the three volumes of his political memoirs — are enormous, detailed, self-serving, and invaluable as historical documents. They total over 3,500 pages and cover virtually every major foreign policy event of the Nixon and Ford administrations.
Diplomacy (1994) is Kissinger’s most widely read book — a sweeping history of European and American diplomacy from Richelieu to the end of the Cold War. It is written with clarity and analytical power and reflects Kissinger’s conviction that the study of history is the essential preparation for statecraft.
On China (2011) draws on his decades of engagement with Chinese leaders, from Mao and Zhou Enlai to Deng Xiaoping. World Order (2014) examines the international system through the lens of different civilisational traditions.
Critical Standing
Kissinger is one of those rare figures who is simultaneously admired as a strategic genius and condemned as a moral catastrophe. His defenders argue that he navigated the Cold War with skill and prevented worse outcomes. His critics argue that his realism was a euphemism for the willingness to sacrifice the lives of millions for geopolitical advantage.
Collecting Kissinger
White House Years (1979, Little, Brown) in first edition brings $30–$100. Diplomacy (1994, Simon & Schuster) brings $20–$60. A World Restored (1957, Houghton Mifflin) in first edition brings $50–$200. Signed copies are widely available; Kissinger signed books throughout his century-long life.