Books, Arts & Manners: The Great Game

Kissinger: A Biography, by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 789 pp., $30)

Diplomacy is a profession that produces its own type of human being. The great diplomatic players—such as Talleyrand, Metternich, Bismarck—have something in common. A cold eye cast on power, a lack of moral prejudices, an appreciation for balance and stability in the international system—these are the attributes that mark them. They are not men of conviction, but the reverse of good fellows. Bismarck used to regard it as disloyalty to the King of Prussia if he allowed himself to like a foreign leader or country.

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Anthony Hartley

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Kissinger: A Biography, by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 789 pp., $30)

Diplomacy is a profession that produces its own type of human being. The great diplomatic players—such as Talleyrand, Metternich, Bismarck—have something in common. A cold eye cast on power, a lack of moral prejudices, an appreciation for balance and stability in the international system—these are the attributes that mark them. They are not men of conviction, but the reverse of good fellows. Bismarck used to regard it as disloyalty to the King of Prussia if he allowed himself to like a foreign leader or country.