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. The access to Richard Holbrooke's papers and to the uncensored memories of his wives and mistresses, as well as George Packer's own racy writing, makes this a fascinating and compulsive read. Even Packer's constant personal intrusions into the story to express his opinion, New Journalism-style, work brilliantly. The author was told he should write a novel about Holbrooke rather than a biography and it often feels as though he has.
Dick Holbrooke first crossed my consciousness in 1994 when George Stephanopoulos, then a close aide to President Clinton, recounted to me with incredulity the behavior of the ambassador to Germany during a presidential trip to Berlin. Holbrooke had repeatedly leapt into ‘the Beast' (the president's armored limousine), breaking all the rules, and perched on the jump seat in order to get face time with the president. The White House staff were appalled.
It turns out this was not Holbrooke's first offense. In 1977 Cyrus Vance, Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, had to ask his personal secretary to write to Holbrooke saying: ‘You may not insert yourself as a passenger in the secretary of state's car unless this office has specifically approved your request to accompany him.' Holbrooke would lurk near the entrance to the State Department to ambush Vance, but the secretary of state was too polite to complain himself. The office warned Holbrooke that the security detail would keep him out by force if necessary. The whole of his life he was actually or metaphorically jumping into other people's cars without asking them.
It is hard to believe that any adult human could ever have been so devoid of self-awareness as Holbrooke. He ignored his brother, his parents and his sons, went through several wives and mistresses and perfected the art of looking over people's shoulders at cocktail parties in search of someone more important. He even pushed an elderly couple of Holocaust survivors off the VIP bus into Auschwitz on the 50th anniversary to make room for himself, leaving them weeping on the pavement. He misjudged successive presidents in the way he dealt with them, correcting Obama during his job interview and telling him to call him Richard rather than Dick because his wife would prefer that.
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