/lit/ - Literature

>>12800360
Start by figuring out his favorite greek

>>12800360
Diplomacy, On China

>>12800360
A World Restored, then 'The White Revolutionary', then The Troubled Partnership, after that either read Kissinger's memories, or skip straight onto Diplomacy. I would say that after that you should read World Order before reading On China, since World Order reflects Kissinger's reconception of the notion of world order as applied in On China, so if you're aiming to understand the theoretical underpinnings of the practical works, a non-chronological ordering is necessary here. That should give you all of the important works which are still relevant, and skip out the less relevant ones like Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy which speak to a particular strategic moment and are not useful articulations of theory.

>>12800393
Me in the middle

>>12802026
Cool, thank you

>>12802147
No problem. If that's a lot I'd definitely skip the memoirs (not sure how serious your study is) and then if necessary also skip The Troubled Partnership and White Revolutionary which aren't essential, but which I'd say are pretty useful for a more developed understanding. Hope this helps you become a better war criminal like it did for me!

>>12800360
Read The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens.

>>12802197
Ahah, what are your thoughts regarding his Reflections on Spengler ?

>>12802218
In his senior thesis do you mean? I've unfortunately yet to read it (though I've read a lot of commentaries on it), so I don't think I'm superbly placed to talk about it, but his reorientation of Spenglerian pessimism as a strange kind of will to power is quite interesting.

>>12802270
That one, you find it on both lib-gen and b-ok if you decide to read it.

A book on how to tie a noose so you can hang the piece of shit war criminal.

>>12800393
Bernie on the right

>>12802374
>leftists

>>12802453
here's that cope you ordered
fat grandpa's a war criminal

>>12802715
t. non-American

>>12800405
This

>>12802329
Yes I should get round to it, but I’ve been quite busy with other books recently, including veering away from my usual more Realist readings in International Relations to more “idealist” and some Marxist stuff. That said though it’s nice that it’s so readily available, though I believe I can also get it through my university's library system.

Read A World Restored, it's an incredible book, gives a glimpse of Kissinger's mind while being immensely readable, captivating, and philosophical. At times even veering into the poetic, which is unusual for statesmen. Example, p. 66:
>A crumbling world order, even one built on force, finds it as difficult to believe its disintegration as a a man to envision his own death. The illusion of permanence is perhaps our most important myth, the one, in any case, which makes life supportable.
Kissinger is one of those rare geniuses on the level of Thucydides, which comes along every generation and changes the world from the shadows.
I'd also highly recommend reading Roberto Calasso's The Ruin's of Kasch afterwards (or concurrently). Although Calasso never directly states it, Kissenger's influence on that book can't be understated, and there's a clear fraternity in themes and discussions between the two which will vastly enrich your understanding of life and politics. Both books concern the efforts to legitimize the post-Napoleonic world order, and by focusing on two subtle and enigmatic politicians, Metternich and Talleyrand respectively, and how their subtle and almost religious attention to the ritual details of statesmanship shaped the modern world.

>>12803569
>tfw you realize the Cold War was a mystical battle between Spenglerian Anarchs and Hegelian fatalists over the ruins of Relativistic Idealism whereof Kissinger is the last wizard left standing

>>12802924
>stopping worldwide statism
Wtf I love the Cia now

Boomers will never appreciate how much Nixon Kissinger gutted the CIA, or how the CIA set Nixon up in order to have him taken down.

Reminder that if this thread dies before hitting the bump limit the old man dies too.

>>12804673
He's still got it: we live in Kissinger's world now. The triumph of American power politics is the only reason Americans can even pretend they have an idealistic foreign policy.

>>12806294
>living in a world without Metternich’s long lost grandson
Not on my watch.

>>12807119
Don't let the Peanut Farmer outlive the greatest statesman since Bismarck!

>>12803569

Is quite right that Kissinger represents one of a relatively small number of historical personalities: the statesman who not only has a great understanding of how the world works, but one who knows WHY it works as it does as well. Thucydides certainly, Richelieu, Metternich and possibly also Talleyrand and Castlreagh (a rare trio of matched opponents) and potentially Bismarck (though as the manuscripts of Kissinger's abandoned book on Bismarck show, for Bismarck world order was markedly different to its understanding by other 19th century statesmen, and Kissinger has some objections to him). Certainly some of his actions were morally unforgivable, but in everything there is a certain genius, and where his mistakes occurred they were never as malicious as feckless critics like that hack Hitchens suggest.

>>12807262
Count my boy Machiavelli in too.

>>12807262
At lot of it comes out of Kissinger’s recognition that I’m diplomacy and geopolitics there’s no “good” choice. The majority of what he’s criticized for is him choosing the pragmatic of two bad options, in which had he done nothing would have been even worse.

Brainlets then reconstruct history to present him as an active force of evil.