The Georgetown Set

The Georgetown Set

By Gregg Herken
Unabridged
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“The past really is another country. Gregg Herken’s intriguing volume is a passport that enables us to visit the vanished country of Georgetown during the Cold War. There the braided political and social networks of a small cohort made, and reported, history.”

George F. Will, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

This fascinating, behind-the-scenes history of postwar Washington is a rich and colorful portrait of the close-knit group of journalists, spies, and government officials who waged the Cold War over cocktails and dinner.

In the years after World War II, Georgetown's leafy streets were home to an unlikely group of cold warriors: a coterie of affluent, well-educated, and well-connected civilians who helped steer American strategy from the Marshall Plan through McCarthyism, Vietnam, and the endgame of Watergate. This Georgetown set included Phil and Kay Graham, husband-and-wife publishers of the Washington Post; Joe and Stewart Alsop, odd-couple brothers who were among the country's premier political pundits; Frank Wisner, a driven, manic-depressive lawyer in charge of CIA covert operations; and a host of diplomats, spies, and scholars. It was a time when presidents made foreign policy in consultation with reporters and professors—often over martinis and hors d'oeuvres—and columnists like the Alsops promoted those policies in the next day's newspapers.

Gregg Herken illuminates the drama of these years and brings this remarkable roster of men and women and their world not only out into the open but vividly to life.

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  1. Ninjacorn 9

    Close, but No Cigar

    Though reader Lloyd James sounded great, I found this audiobook a little disappointing. I thought it was going to be a fly-on-the-wall historical analysis of Cold War America in the 1960s—what led to cigar-smoke deal-making, backroom swindling and political showmanship, maybe some neat info on the JFK assassination. Instead it was an oily soap opera full of incomplete and shoddy research, focusing on the characters’ personal and private indiscretions. Gay sex and blackmail are constant themes, designed to titillate and add drama, I guess. Oops. These revelations may be of concern to those who haven't read much on the general topic of the Cold War and find the gossipy material attractive, or simply prefer their audiobooks dipped in body oily, but I just didn't find it to be very beneficial from a historical--or mature--perspective.

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