The first of two volumes, this is an extraordinary panorama of Kissinger's world, and a reappraisal of the revered and reviled American statesman. Only through knowledge of Kissinger's early life (as a Jew in Hitler's Germany, a poor immigrant in New York, a GI at the Battle of the Bulge, an interrogator of Nazis, and a student of history at Harvard) can we understand his debt to the philosophy of idealism. Draws on Kissinger's hitherto closed private papers, as well as on documents from more than 100 archives around the world. Now in paperback.