The Atlantic century

"The Atlantic Century reveals for the first time the American-European partnership as it evolved in the last century through the eyes of the personalities at its source. America's strong ties to Europe did not emerge serendipitously. They were carefully constructed and cemented by a network of diplomats and politicians that imagined, built, and sustained a new international system centered on the Atlantic. In their vision, America and Europe were essential parts of a single cooperative community, not rivals or one another's periodic savior." "Historian Kenneth Weisbrode reveals - for the first time, warts and all - the insider's story of such well-known figures as Dean Acheson, W. Averell Harriman, and Henry Kissinger. It is the story of how and why the State Department's Bureau of European Affairs (EUR) - the "mother bureau" as it was called, the nerve center of the Atlanticists - rose to become the U.S. government s preeminent foreign policy office."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.