It seems unpromising: a massive, sprawling biography of Richard Holbrooke, whose name you may dimly remember from the Bill Clinton years and his late-life efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A diplomat, you may vaguely recall. Big fellow, big ego. (Both indisputable.) Something about the Balkans. (And the peace he crafted in the unlikely environs of Dayton, Ohio.) Yesterday's man. (With the fading interest of yesterday.)
But by the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked. You'll come to understand that the author, New Yorker writer George Packer, understood Holbrooke, understood power, understood America in its eclipse at the end of the 20th century and into the 21st. You'll come to understand that Packer knew the great man, in fact thought he was great: great of ambition, of character, of intelligence, of intuition, of impulse, and, above all, great of flaws, including betrayal. And you'll realize that Holbrooke, who died nine years ago, was central to what was central to much of postwar American life, and that in a terrifying way his story is America's story.
There never was a diplomat-activist quite like him, and there seldom has been a book quite like this — sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself. Packer interviewed 250 people who knew Holbrooke — he was at the center of a vast Venn diagram of thinkers, lawmakers, diplomats, world leaders, rogues and charlatans. And journalist Kati Marton, his last wife, though not his last lover, gave Packer access to a trove of documents, diaries, billets-doux. She imagined Packer would use them brilliantly, and he did, but she can't have imagined the undercurrent of poignancy that runs throughout.
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