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Reviews
The Kremlinologist is part biography, part Cold War history, and a fitting tribute by his daughters to a consequential American diplomat.
Thompson’s is an archetypal American story that took him from the wilds of the American West at the beginning of the 20th century to inside the halls of the White House and behind the walls of the Kremlin... Thompson’s story also confirms the power of personal diplomacy, patience and cultivation of deep understanding of and empathy for the other.
Neither Jenny nor Sherry Thompson, his daughters, is a professional historian, but they have closely researched official records and secondary sources and interviewed experts and eyewitnesses, and they draw on personal anecdotes that illuminate the family life of this formidable diplomat. The result is a readable portrait of a man whose behind-the-scenes role in major events is easy to overlook.
Llewellyn Thompson served eight U.S. presidents as a diplomat, including two stints as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. This rigorously documented book by his two daughters recounts his four decades as a Foreign Service officer... a valuable addition to the history of the first half of the Cold War, as well as a compelling biography of their father.
Ambassador Thompson would have been proud of the skill, thoroughness and evenhandedness with which his daughters compiled this biography.
In vigorous prose, Thompson's daughters Jenny and Sherry Thompson document his life as an accomplished career diplomat. They describe how Thompson joined the Foreign Service both to feed his desire for adventure and from a deep sense of duty.
This magnificent book, handsomely produced by the publisher, is a pleasure to read. Jenny Thompson and Sherry Thompson have skillfully interwoven memories from their childhood experiences in Russia, their mother's unpublished memoirs, other family papers, interviews with American diplomats, extensive research in published and unpublished documents, and wide range of scholarly studies to create a thorough and insightful examination of the long diplomatic career of their extraordinarily discreet and self-effacing father.
By telling the detailed personal story of Ambassador Llewellyn E Thompson, the most brilliant American master of negotiation and compromise, The Kremlinologist will help diplomats deal successfully with future crises. Highly recommended.
A wonderful achievement; with every page, my appreciation grew. The authors succeed in commemorating the role of their father, Llewellyn Thompson, an unsung hero of the Cold War, while going beyond a simplistic portrayal of American motives and decision making in the longest confrontation of the twentieth century. Meticulously researched and infused with empathy for both sides, The Kremlinologist is a valuable contribution to Cold War scholarship.
A remarkable, insightful picture of Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson as a person and of his role in the conduct of American diplomacy. Well researched and beautifully written, The Kremlinologist will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in foreign policy, the work of diplomats, and the history of the Cold War.
Combining a charming family memoir with meticulous diplomatic history, Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson’s daughters’ wonderful account illuminates everything from their adventures growing up in the Moscow embassy, to Stalin’s and Khrushchev’s relations with presidents from Roosevelt to Johnson, to the Cold War’s main crises in Berlin, Cuba, and Vietnam.
Thoroughly researched and beautifully written, The Kremlinologist is an analytically piercing biography of America’s longest serving and most influential Soviet expert, Ambassador Llewellyn E Thompson. Both an intimate portrait and an insider’s account of life in Moscow during the Cold War, it reveals new and fascinating details about the many US–Soviet crises that Thompson helped to resolve during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations.
In The Kremlinologist, Jenny and Sherry Thompson's masterful biography of the legendary Ambassador Llwellyn Thompson, his daughters resurrect a bygone—and sorely missed—era of American diplomacy. Exercising archival and anthropological diligence, no archive has gone unvisited, no eyewitness has not been interviewed. This book will find its deserved place as an exemplary addition to the history of twentieth-century American diplomacy.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
7
x 10
Pages
600
ISBN
9781421424545
Illustration Description
48 b&w photos
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I
1. The Beginning
2. Into the World
3. To Moscow
4. The Siege of Moscow
5. The Germans in Retreat
6. Conferences
7. The Hot War Ends and the Cold War Begins
8. The Truman
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I
1. The Beginning
2. Into the World
3. To Moscow
4. The Siege of Moscow
5. The Germans in Retreat
6. Conferences
7. The Hot War Ends and the Cold War Begins
8. The Truman Doctrine
9. The Birth of Covert Operations
10. Overseas Again
Part II
11. Chief of Mission
12. The Trieste Negotiations
13. The Austrian State Treaty Negotiations
14. Open Skies, Closed Borders
Part III
15. Khrushchev's Decade (1953–1964)
16. Moscow 2
17. Khrushchev's First Gamble: Berlin Poker
18. Dueling Exhibitions
19. The Russian Is Coming
20. U-2: The End of Détente
21. Picking Up the Pieces
22. Working for the New President
23. Meeting in Vienna
24. The Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party
25. Up the Down Escalator
26. Goodbye Moscow, Hello Washington
27. Thirteen Days in October
28. Limited Test Ban
Part IV
29. The Lyndon Johnson Years
30. Strand One
31. Thompson's Vietnam
32. Strand Two
33. Strand Three
34. Moscow 3
35. The Six-Day War
36. Glassboro
37. 1968
38. "Retirement," So to Speak
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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