The Georgetown set: friends and rivals in Cold War Washington

A fascinating, behind-the-scenes history of postwar Washington-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.

Title from resource description page (Recorded Books, viewed June 19, 2014).

The WASP ascendancy -- "A political village which has become a world capital" -- "Everything is awful here" -- "Is war inevitable?" -- "Would he go into the woods?" -- "To fight fire with fire" -- "Some brave new approach" -- "A land of conspiracy, run by conspirators" -- "Why has Washington gone crazy?" -- "A rather serious border incident" -- "Venomous, exciting and pretty frightening" -- Bold easterners -- "Stray and gusty winds" -- "The wild pigs of Capitol Hill" -- "An act of very great folly" -- "A chap of great promise" -- "The prophet of the missile gap" -- "A breathless time, full of energy and hope" -- "We will all fry" -- "How great is one's duty to truth?" -- Degringolade -- "The other side of the coin" -- "I'm afraid Joe is a cruel man" -- "It was the war that did him in" -- "Nobody plays by the rules anymore" -- "There is a feeling of doors closing" -- Epilogue: "We're all so old or dead": the end of the Georgetown set.