OnPoint Subscriber Exclusive
Global Bookmark offers long-form examinations of global trends and challenges, viewed through the lens of important new books.
The American Century’s Last Man
George Packer’s biography of Richard Holbrooke manages to capture the great American diplomat’s complex character and long career in a single volume. In reflecting on Holbrook’s accomplishments in the service of diplomacy and human rights, one encounters a man whose character was in perfect step with that of his country.
https://prosyn.org/YHquOcl
DENVER – For those of us who were blessed – some might say cursed – to have spent important parts of our careers with Richard Holbrooke, the journalist George Packer’s masterful biography of the American diplomat had to clear a high bar. I, for one, opened Our Man with a sense of dread as to what Packer would choose to say about such a complex person. After all, among the hundreds of people interviewed for the book, many have been harshly critical of Holbrooke.