The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington

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.