Does Not Wisdom Cry?

“Does Not Wisdom Cry?” is the story of a man whose life straddled and contained an entire epoch. George F. Kennan (1904-2005) was born into the world of the Lumiere and Wright brothers, but lived to watch embedded television coverage of the Iraq War. His moment of power was brief, but its impact was almost without parallel. At the end of WWII, he created the Marshall Plan and “Containment,” America’s long-term Cold War strategy. In the words of Henry Kissinger, Kennan “came as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our history.” And yet, he will probably be most remembered for how he spent the second half of his 101 years: criticizing the metamorphosis and misapplication of the very policies he helped to devise. George Kennan is one of the key architects of today’s global order, and also one of its most eloquent critics. George Kennan was a master of the twentieth century, and for the twenty-first we can have no better guide. Inspired by its hero, “Does Not Wisdom Cry?” penetrates an entire epoch by penetrating the seemingly unfathomable montage of images that epoch left behind.