Research Catalog

Title

The chairman : John J. McCloy, the making of the American establishment / Kai Bird.

Author

Bird, Kai

Publication

New York : Simon & Schuster, c1992.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

800 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., ports.; 25 cm.

Summary

• "Even among the members of his powerful circle, the influential men who shaped the postwar globe and became the original 'best and brightest,' John McCloy stood as a figure of towering achievement. As a Wall Street lawyer who earned the confidence of captains of industry and presidents; as Henry Stimson's right-hand man at the War Department; as president of the World Bank and chairman of the Chase financial empire; as perhaps the most frequently named presidential adviser, McCloy came to epitomize the American Establishment and the values of a generation that led the United States through bitter war and unparalleled prosperity.^
• In this first complete biography of McCloy, Kai Bird chronicles the very public life of the man Harper's magazine once labeled 'the most influential private citizen in America.' Against the background of World War II, the Cold War, the construction of Pax Americana, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, and events as recent as the Iran hostage crisis, Bird shows us McCloy's astonishing rise and the relationships he developed with fellow 'Wise Men' (George Kennan, Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson, et al), relationships that became the very foundation of American business, economic power, and diplomatic strength. The son of a strong-willed and determined mother, McCloy began life in a drab Philadelphia neighborhood just beyond 'the right side of the tracks.' His father died before the boy's sixth birthday, leaving little money.^
• Fired by his mother's ambition, his own quiet determination, and the values of the Peddie Institute, McCloy began a lifelong pursuit of excellence that would take him to the capitals of the world and the highest echelons of achievement. Though McCloy increasingly ran with (and usually outpaced) 'the swift' and socially advantaged, he never lost sense of himself as the underdog, the poor boy who had to try in order to succeed. Kai Bird brilliantly explores how this self-described 'chore boy' willed himself to greatness with his capacity for work, his ability to inspire trust, and his unfailing willingness to get the job done--without falling prey to self-congratulation or egomaniacal show.^
• From ivy-covered columns of Amherst and Harvard to gilt ballrooms of society's finest families; from tough decisions (like his refusal at the War Department to bomb Auschwitz, his role in the internment of the Japanese-Americans, and his opposition to the bombing at Hiroshima) to economic miracles among the blue-suited aristocrats of the World Bank, Bird captures every facet of McCloy's complicated yet seemingly easygoing nature. We see McCloy's commercial acumen during his days as the most in-demand lawyer on Wall Street; the dictatorial will of the determined ruler during his tenure as high commissioner of occupied Germany; his stoic loyalty as adviser to presidents FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Ford, and Reagan. Finally, during McCloy's era at the Council on Foreign Relations and his reign as esteemed elder statesman, we see, at close range, 'the Chairman' in all his reasoned wisdom."--Dust jacket.

Subject

• McCloy, John Jay, 1895-
• Statesmen > United States > Biography

Genre/Form

• Biographie.
• Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Book I: The making of a Wall Street lawyer. A Philadelphia youth: 1895-1912 ; Amherst years: 1912-16 ; Harvard Law School and the war years: 1916-21 ; Wall Street: 1921-30 ; Black Tom: McCloy's wilderness of mirrors ; Cravath, the New Deal, and the approach of war -- Book II: World War II. Imps of Satan ; Internment of the Japanese Americans ; Political commissar ; McCloy and the Holocaust ; Victory in Europe ; Hiroshima -- Book III: Wall Street, the World Bank, and Germany. A brief return to Wall Street ; The World Bank: "McCloy über Alles" ; German proconsul: 1949 ; The dilemma of German rearmament ; McCloy and U.S. intelligence operations in Germany ; The clemency decisions ; Negotiating an end to occupation -- Book IV: The Eisenhower years. Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank: 1953-60 ; McCloy, McCarthyism, and the early Eisenhower presidency ; Ike's wise man -- Book V: The Kennedy Administration. Arms control czar ; The Cuban Missile Crisis -- Book VI: LBJ's wise man. The Warren Commission, a Brazil coup, Egypt again, and the 1964 election ; McCloy and Vietnam: 1965-68, NATO crisis, secret Middle East negotiations -- Book VII: Elder statesman 1969-89. The Establishment at bay: the Nixon-Kissinger Administration ; McCloy and the Iran-hostage crisis -- Twilight years.

ISBN

0671454153

LCCN

^^^91044255^

OCLC

• 25026508
• SCSB-11188120

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library