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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."
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."
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First published October 28, 2014
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October 19, 2014
The Georgetown Set provides a look at Cold War Washington DC and the late night booze soaked parties that made the world go round during this time period. The ascendancy of the WASP Ivy League crowd is put on full display by Gregg Herken and lauded about for the actions taken during the cold war. Although much of their activity would land them in jail today at the time the sharing of information between government officials and reporters (including tons of classified materials) led to shaping of public opinion and Cold War Policy. From the Alsop brothers to George Kennan to presidents of all types the Georgetown set transcended party and ideology to shape public opinion on issues from the USSR to Vietnam which would ultimately along with the counterculture of the 60’s youths bring this set to an end. The author takes you through the relationships between the power brokers and the hanger-on’s and through the party circuit that became the lifeblood of Washington DC. It is detailed, juicy and keeps the pace moving with tons of great anecdotes and information about the participants. Focusing heavily on Kennan, the Alsop brothers and Graham’s of the Washington Post the stories revealed here lead to a look at the Cold War in a while new light. For those interested in Cold War politics you will not find this to be a dull book.
January 11, 2016
When one discusses the value of real estate one usually encounters the phrase “location, location, location.” This could be the theme of Greg Herken’s THE GEORGETOWN SET: FRIENDS AND RIVALS IN COLD WAR WASHINGTON, a book centered on a Georgetown, Washington, D.C. neighborhood after World War II, whose residents included the Alsop brothers, Jack and Jaqueline Kennedy, Ben and Tony Bradlee, Allen and Clover Dulles, Dean and Alice Acheson, Philp and Katherine Graham, Averill and Marie Harriman, Frank and Polly Wisner among others. Within the group you had a future president and Secretary of State, the head of the CIA and other operatives, two ambassadors to the Soviet Union, influential journalists, and the owner and editor of the Washington Post. The neighbors who were known as the “Georgetown Set,” were at the forefront of American policy as the Cold War began and evolved, as Dean Acheson entitled his memoirs, they were PRESENT AT CREATION, and a few of them lived to see the curtain fall on the conflict with the communist world. These individuals were not only neighbors, for the most part, they were close friends. They had attended the same boarding schools and universities and “believed that the United States had the power—and the moral obligation—to oppose tyranny and stand up of the world’s underdogs.” They held a sense of duty and the belief in the “rightness of the country and its causes—which were, more often than not, their own.”
Unlike today, it was a time of consensus in foreign policy in dealing with the Soviet Union, partisanship was an afterthought. The outset of the Cold War produced the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, Point Four, and NATO, but the mindset of these individuals would also lead to mistakes embodied in the disastrous coups of the Eisenhower era, the Bay of Pigs, and the Vietnam War. Greg Herken tells the story of these influential people, how their ideas dominated American policy, and what the ramifications of that influence were. The reader is exposed to intimate details and tremendous insights as these power brokers are examined, and it makes for a fascinating read.
The narrative focuses on the most important foreign policy debates of the 20th century, where the residents of Georgetown aligned themselves, and how their views affected the success or failure of presidential decision making. Once the Nazis and the Japanese were defeated in 1945, the foreign policy debate focused on the communist threat and the motives of the Soviet Union. The debate was symbolized by George Kennan, who at one point was head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department as well as stints as ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia; and Paul Nitze, former Secretary of the Navy, and author of NSC-68 which along with Kennan’s “X Article” formed the basis of American policy toward Russia for well into the 1980s. The debate centered on “whether it was America’s moral example or material power that kept the Russians at bay” during the Cold War. Many other individuals draw Herken’s discerning eye during the period, the most important of which were Joseph and Stewart Alsop, the journalism brothers who advised presidents, and helped articulate positions on Vietnam and Cuba that some would argue pushed our nation’s chief executives into making unwise policy choices.
At times the book reads like a biography of the Alsop brothers as Herken develops their careers as the centerpiece of the monograph. Of the two, Joseph Alsop dominated their relationship and developed numerous sources within the national security apparatus in presidential administrations from Truman through Nixon. Joseph Alsop had his own agenda and his columns created enough pressure on Lyndon Johnson that many believe forced him to consider Alsop’s readership when making decisions about Vietnam, a subject that Alsop seemed obsessed with and had difficulty accepting any information that contradicted what he believed. The Alsops hosted numerous dinner parties that were used as conduits to different presidential administrations as conversations yielded information that turned up in their newspaper columns. Herken almost makes the reader as if they are invited guests to the Sunday night gatherings among the “Georgetown Set” and at times the reader might feel like a “fly on the wall” as you witness history being made. In addition to the Alsops, the inner sanctum of the Washington Post is laid bare as great events are reported. We see the newspaper under the stewardship of Philip Graham at the outset of the Cold War until his suicide, when his wife Katharine takes the reigns of the paper and turns it into a strong competitor to the New York Times. Reporting on Watergate, My Lai and other issues reflected Katharine Graham’s growth as the head of a major newspaper and her dominant role in Washington politics.
The book also centers on the evolution of the American intelligence community from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Herken focuses most of his attention on Allen W. Dulles, who worked under Wild Bill Donavan who headed the OSS, and would later head the CIA under President Eisenhower and for a short time under John F. Kennedy; and Frank Wisner, an OSS and CIA operative who was known for his outlandish covert plans, i.e.; trying to overthrow the government of Albania, dropping propaganda leaflets and intelligence operatives behind the “iron curtain” among many of his projects. CIA involvement in Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, and Guatemala are dissected in detail and Herken correctly points to current issues that date back to Dulles, Wisner, and numerous other individuals in the intelligence community, and how they negatively affected American foreign policy for decades.
The books serves as an important window into the lives of people who dominated the American foreign policy establishment throughout the Cold War. Herken seems to assess all of the major decisions that were made during the period, as well as evaluating each of the characters presented and how their lives affected the course of American history. Many of the individuals that Herken discusses are well known, but others are brought out of the shadows. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is when Herken muses about the lives of the children of the “Georgetown Set,” and how the generation gap that developed in response to the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s affected the next “Georgetown” generation.
Herken writes with flair and has exceptional command of his material and sources and has offered a unique approach to the causes and results of the Cold War that should satisfy academics as well as the general reader.
Unlike today, it was a time of consensus in foreign policy in dealing with the Soviet Union, partisanship was an afterthought. The outset of the Cold War produced the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, Point Four, and NATO, but the mindset of these individuals would also lead to mistakes embodied in the disastrous coups of the Eisenhower era, the Bay of Pigs, and the Vietnam War. Greg Herken tells the story of these influential people, how their ideas dominated American policy, and what the ramifications of that influence were. The reader is exposed to intimate details and tremendous insights as these power brokers are examined, and it makes for a fascinating read.
The narrative focuses on the most important foreign policy debates of the 20th century, where the residents of Georgetown aligned themselves, and how their views affected the success or failure of presidential decision making. Once the Nazis and the Japanese were defeated in 1945, the foreign policy debate focused on the communist threat and the motives of the Soviet Union. The debate was symbolized by George Kennan, who at one point was head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department as well as stints as ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia; and Paul Nitze, former Secretary of the Navy, and author of NSC-68 which along with Kennan’s “X Article” formed the basis of American policy toward Russia for well into the 1980s. The debate centered on “whether it was America’s moral example or material power that kept the Russians at bay” during the Cold War. Many other individuals draw Herken’s discerning eye during the period, the most important of which were Joseph and Stewart Alsop, the journalism brothers who advised presidents, and helped articulate positions on Vietnam and Cuba that some would argue pushed our nation’s chief executives into making unwise policy choices.
At times the book reads like a biography of the Alsop brothers as Herken develops their careers as the centerpiece of the monograph. Of the two, Joseph Alsop dominated their relationship and developed numerous sources within the national security apparatus in presidential administrations from Truman through Nixon. Joseph Alsop had his own agenda and his columns created enough pressure on Lyndon Johnson that many believe forced him to consider Alsop’s readership when making decisions about Vietnam, a subject that Alsop seemed obsessed with and had difficulty accepting any information that contradicted what he believed. The Alsops hosted numerous dinner parties that were used as conduits to different presidential administrations as conversations yielded information that turned up in their newspaper columns. Herken almost makes the reader as if they are invited guests to the Sunday night gatherings among the “Georgetown Set” and at times the reader might feel like a “fly on the wall” as you witness history being made. In addition to the Alsops, the inner sanctum of the Washington Post is laid bare as great events are reported. We see the newspaper under the stewardship of Philip Graham at the outset of the Cold War until his suicide, when his wife Katharine takes the reigns of the paper and turns it into a strong competitor to the New York Times. Reporting on Watergate, My Lai and other issues reflected Katharine Graham’s growth as the head of a major newspaper and her dominant role in Washington politics.
The book also centers on the evolution of the American intelligence community from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Herken focuses most of his attention on Allen W. Dulles, who worked under Wild Bill Donavan who headed the OSS, and would later head the CIA under President Eisenhower and for a short time under John F. Kennedy; and Frank Wisner, an OSS and CIA operative who was known for his outlandish covert plans, i.e.; trying to overthrow the government of Albania, dropping propaganda leaflets and intelligence operatives behind the “iron curtain” among many of his projects. CIA involvement in Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, and Guatemala are dissected in detail and Herken correctly points to current issues that date back to Dulles, Wisner, and numerous other individuals in the intelligence community, and how they negatively affected American foreign policy for decades.
The books serves as an important window into the lives of people who dominated the American foreign policy establishment throughout the Cold War. Herken seems to assess all of the major decisions that were made during the period, as well as evaluating each of the characters presented and how their lives affected the course of American history. Many of the individuals that Herken discusses are well known, but others are brought out of the shadows. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is when Herken muses about the lives of the children of the “Georgetown Set,” and how the generation gap that developed in response to the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s affected the next “Georgetown” generation.
Herken writes with flair and has exceptional command of his material and sources and has offered a unique approach to the causes and results of the Cold War that should satisfy academics as well as the general reader.
December 16, 2014
Joseph Alsop lived in the slightly wrong part of the 20th century and found himself covering the wrong type of wars. In the portrayal by historian Gregg Herken, he belonged to the late colonial era of Evelyn Waugh and would have flourished in covering any number of Victorian era conflicts as a Colonel Blimp-style war correspondent.
But Alsop and his circle – brother Stewart and fellow journalists, spies, bureaucrats, and academics --belonged to a different time, one that began at what Dean Acheson memorably termed Present at the Creation – in this case the Cold War. They were witnesses, and often participants, in the great events of the Cold War. But they were also present to make often horrific the misjudgments associated with the escalation and final implosion of the Vietnam conflict and the ugly collapse of the Nixon Administration over Watergate.
The most delightful part of the book is the depiction of their intertwined social lives, since so many of them did indeed live within walking distance of each other in Georgetown, a coterie of what David Halberstam later named The Best and Brightest. Certainly they were bright and powerful in their heyday: the Alsops, Frank Wisner, Chip Bolen, Tommy Thompson, George Kennan, and the Washington Post circle of Philip and Kay Graham and Ben Bradlee. Their heyday came with the election of John Kennedy, the Cuban missile crisis, and the rise of the cold war state. (To their discredit, they rarely dealt with civil rights and Martin Luther King.)
But Vietnam and the Kennedy assassination changed everything, and the book devolves in large measure into the struggle of the Alsops (notably Joe) to maintain the steady drumbeat of escalation in Vietnam and not lose faith in the ultimate victory, even at the cost of some 5,000 casualties and the expansion of the conflict into Laos and Cambodia. With Alsop’s eagerness for good news from official sources, the Johnson and Nixon administrations could easily manipulate him with tours and briefings. But they were far less successful with a younger generation like Halberstam or Ward Just who were actually reporting the war from the ground.
Alsop’s Achilles heel (like that of many other journalists) was the constant need for access – and for Alsop, official briefings that gave them what they wanted to hear anyway would serve as satisfactory substitutes for original reporting. No one understood this better than Henry Kissinger, who manipulated Alsop time and again on Nixon’s China opening and the nature of the spreading Watergate scandal. By the end, Alsop stood virtually alone among journalists willing to defend Nixon in Southeast Asia; it basically ended his career as a credible journalist.
But Alsop and his circle – brother Stewart and fellow journalists, spies, bureaucrats, and academics --belonged to a different time, one that began at what Dean Acheson memorably termed Present at the Creation – in this case the Cold War. They were witnesses, and often participants, in the great events of the Cold War. But they were also present to make often horrific the misjudgments associated with the escalation and final implosion of the Vietnam conflict and the ugly collapse of the Nixon Administration over Watergate.
The most delightful part of the book is the depiction of their intertwined social lives, since so many of them did indeed live within walking distance of each other in Georgetown, a coterie of what David Halberstam later named The Best and Brightest. Certainly they were bright and powerful in their heyday: the Alsops, Frank Wisner, Chip Bolen, Tommy Thompson, George Kennan, and the Washington Post circle of Philip and Kay Graham and Ben Bradlee. Their heyday came with the election of John Kennedy, the Cuban missile crisis, and the rise of the cold war state. (To their discredit, they rarely dealt with civil rights and Martin Luther King.)
But Vietnam and the Kennedy assassination changed everything, and the book devolves in large measure into the struggle of the Alsops (notably Joe) to maintain the steady drumbeat of escalation in Vietnam and not lose faith in the ultimate victory, even at the cost of some 5,000 casualties and the expansion of the conflict into Laos and Cambodia. With Alsop’s eagerness for good news from official sources, the Johnson and Nixon administrations could easily manipulate him with tours and briefings. But they were far less successful with a younger generation like Halberstam or Ward Just who were actually reporting the war from the ground.
Alsop’s Achilles heel (like that of many other journalists) was the constant need for access – and for Alsop, official briefings that gave them what they wanted to hear anyway would serve as satisfactory substitutes for original reporting. No one understood this better than Henry Kissinger, who manipulated Alsop time and again on Nixon’s China opening and the nature of the spreading Watergate scandal. By the end, Alsop stood virtually alone among journalists willing to defend Nixon in Southeast Asia; it basically ended his career as a credible journalist.
December 30, 2022
This is an absolutely fascinating book about a time when Georgetown was the center of American politics and ideology. Early on in the book the author makes the interesting point that nowadays most Washington people are types of freelancers, meaning they basically work in terms of self interest. This is in contrast to the postwar Georgetown set, who were a ruling elite class focused on ideology. These were self appointed gate keepers, policy makers, CIA operatives, ambassadors, a future president and secretary of states. I a very small neighborhood more powerful people could be found in almost anywhere else at that time. They were a ruling elite. Much a policy was made at dinner party is an all of these people socialized and knew each other. We’re talking about the Kennedys, the Bradlees , the Dulles, Philip and Katherine Graham Frank and Polly Wisner and the two that are probably the main characters of this book for Joseph in Stuart Alsop. Because there’s not a great biography on Joseph Alsop I really enjoyed this book because he went into such detail about Alsop’s agenda and life. I didn’t really talk about his art collecting practices or the book that he wrote about art collecting which was unfortunate. I think especially Joseph Alsop and Katherine Graham are fascinating characters. It definitely is a focus on the formation of the CIA from the OSS.
August 2, 2015
A different type of history book which follows the careers of the two Alsop brothers, Joseph and Stewart, who spent several decades writing political commentary for national consumption. Both brothers lived in Georgetown, a sought-after, upscale suburb of Washington, DC inhabited by the younger, up-and-coming denizens of the government and its allied branches and offshoots. Their neighbors included congressional and cabinet-level staffers, major newspeople, attorneys and lobbyists, and a smattering of bankers and wealthy locals. Sometime after WWII a ritual began which continued for many years; on many Sunday evenings the movers-and-shakers of the day would assemble at various Georgetown residences for drinks and dinner. The only rule was that everyone had to go home by 11 PM. The abundant libations produced wide-ranging conversations and, at times, contentious discussions and confrontations. But when the sun came up the next day, all was usually forgiven, and the Alsop brothers were writing their columns blending the essentials of the evening's dialogues with previous input from their research and contacts. The Alsop brothers more-or-less lived off these parties --- fostering important contacts, learning who was doing what to whom, gathering the nitty-gritty about hot foreign affairs topics and national issues, and hearing, first hand, the scandalous gossip issuing from Washington's porous, governmental offices. Their columns appeared in major newspapers and magazines throughout the country, providing Joe and Stewart with good livings and rewarding them with fame and influence.
Following the Alsops and their political writings, the reader is given a front row seat to this country's trials and tribulations from the end of WWII to the days following Watergate. Joe Alsop, the more opinionated brother, didn't always agree with the course the country was taking, and he wasn't the least bit shy about telling everyone when he thought we were on the wrong track. He was especially stubborn about the Vietnam War (the US should have won the war) and our dealings with the Soviet Union (the US wasn't tough enough). Joe also consistently hammered on one of his major pet peeves: the CIA had never been given the free rein it needed to deal effectively with America's enemies abroad. Regardless of how you feel about the brothers and their tactics, they had an undeniable impact, largely unknown today, on the post-war history of this country.
Following the Alsops and their political writings, the reader is given a front row seat to this country's trials and tribulations from the end of WWII to the days following Watergate. Joe Alsop, the more opinionated brother, didn't always agree with the course the country was taking, and he wasn't the least bit shy about telling everyone when he thought we were on the wrong track. He was especially stubborn about the Vietnam War (the US should have won the war) and our dealings with the Soviet Union (the US wasn't tough enough). Joe also consistently hammered on one of his major pet peeves: the CIA had never been given the free rein it needed to deal effectively with America's enemies abroad. Regardless of how you feel about the brothers and their tactics, they had an undeniable impact, largely unknown today, on the post-war history of this country.
November 30, 2014
The "Georgetown Set" consisted of a coterie of affluent, well-educated, and well-connected civilians living in a fashionable Washington, D.C. neighborhood says the author, Gregg Herken, in his new book of the same title wherein he describes the impact, the likes of Phil and Kay Graham (publishers of the the Washington Post" at the time), Joe and brother, Stewart Alsop (columnists and journalists), and a host of other inhabitants of this cozy, yet affluent D.C. suburb, rendered on the "cold war" politics of the 1940's through the Nixon era.The majority of Herken's focus is on Joe, followed closely by the Grahams, Stewart and a host of other CIA and related operatives, politicians of the day and other journalists. The book starts with Joe's return from the war, and along with his brother, started writing a syndicated column entitled "Matter of Fact" (which appeared 4 times a week in two hundred newspapers in the U.S. and around the world during the 1950's) and authored many articles in the "Saturday Evening Post" and elsewhere. The brothers developed an "access journalism" methodology through their covetous contacts with well-connected government insiders with special knowledge including presidential staff members- and in some instances, the president himself (Kennedy and Nixon mostly), and other intelligence gatherers, with varying degrees of success. Joe was obsessed with the idea of the U.S. losing the Vietnam war, Russian aggression and their nuclear capabilities and therefore arduously advocated in his columns against containment policies long after the Vietnam war was a lost cause.The author provides interesting insight into the measures of control such figures as J. Edgar Hoover and Eugene McCarthy exerted and how the Alsop brothers battled these creeps from the start. Glimpses of the superstars, including the Kennedy clan, are mentioned as are the elaborate soirees hosted by Joe at his Georgetown abode. For a more detailed review of this book, including some perspective on Joe's homosexuality and criticism of some of the players, see my review at sopusa.net. This is a very good book.
May 19, 2015
B+ -- Interesting, especially to me since I went to school in Georgetown during the time covered by the book, I know the neighborhood, and I remember the events that the book focuses on. It includes some nice little anecdotes about the people in the Georgetown set. And it was eye-opening -- I had no idea how much political business was being handled through back channels that the public knew nothing about. It makes me wonder what I don't know about now. Two odd things -- one effort during the cold war was to establish Albania as an independent country to encourage other countries to try to do the same, but every plan failed. That was because Kim Philby was working in the U.S. State Department at that time and was sabotaging these plans. There was only a brief mention of his presence here much later in the book. Another odd thing -- it's my understanding that Bobby Kennedy advised J.F.K. to try to give Khrushchev a way to save face and back off rather than resort to nuclear weapons or other military options J.F.K.'s advisors were proposing. This was the reason we got out of the Cuban missile crisis without starting a war with the Soviet Union. Bobby's role was ignored in the book.
March 26, 2015
I don't usually like books so gossipy that they drag so many names into the melee except by the fact that this melee was precisely Georgetown and American politics. I can't say that I liked my life in the 60's with the constant looming threat of going to the war that this book so insanely elucidates. As such this book should be required high school reading.
November 11, 2025
Gregg Herken’s The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington (2014) is an engrossing and meticulously researched account of the intellectual and social elite who dominated American foreign policy during the early Cold War. Blending biography, political history, and social commentary, Herken reconstructs the world of Washington’s postwar establishment—the journalists, diplomats, and spies who gathered in the salons and dinner parties of Georgetown and, in the process, helped to shape the ideological contours of American global leadership. Through a masterful narrative, Herken situates this elite milieu at the intersection of private friendship and public power, arguing that the social networks and shared assumptions of “the Georgetown Set” profoundly influenced the creation and conduct of the U.S. national security state.
At its core, The Georgetown Set is a study of how an informal ruling class translated its values and relationships into the architecture of Cold War policy. Herken’s protagonists—Allen and John Foster Dulles, Frank Wisner, Phil and Katharine Graham, George Kennan, Joseph Alsop, Dean Acheson, and others—formed a self-reinforcing community bound by education, class, and ideology. Almost all were products of the Ivy League, the East Coast establishment, and the interwar cosmopolitan elite. Their lives intersected in Georgetown’s drawing rooms, where social conversation often bled into statecraft. Herken’s central claim is that these gatherings were not merely sites of social life but informal extensions of policymaking—spaces where consensus about America’s global mission was forged and reinforced.
Herken’s historical narrative unfolds from the end of World War II through the 1970s, tracing how the Georgetown elite shaped the trajectory of American foreign policy from containment to détente. Drawing on extensive archival research and personal papers, Herken offers rich portraits of figures such as Dean Acheson, whose patrician sensibility epitomized the moral confidence of the American establishment, and Frank Wisner, whose leadership in the CIA’s covert operations embodied the fusion of idealism and intrigue that defined the early Cold War. Joseph Alsop, the influential columnist and tireless networker, serves as a central narrative thread; through him, Herken explores how journalism and policymaking intertwined in an era when the boundaries between media and government were permeable and mutually reinforcing.
One of the book’s major strengths lies in its portrayal of the Georgetown Set as both a social phenomenon and a political ideology. Herken interprets this group as the embodiment of a liberal internationalist consensus that combined anti-communism with faith in American exceptionalism. The Set’s members believed in a paternalistic vision of leadership, guided by a sense of noblesse oblige and moral duty to manage the world’s affairs. Yet, as Herken demonstrates, their insularity and self-assurance also contributed to the arrogance and misjudgments that defined later Cold War debacles—from the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam. The same network that produced the Marshall Plan and NATO also enabled the covert interventions and imperial overreach of the 1950s and 1960s.
Herken’s treatment of the CIA is particularly revealing. The Georgetown Set’s proximity to the intelligence community—many were personal friends of CIA directors, officers, and journalists covering covert operations—allowed for a blurring of public and private roles. Herken argues that this network sustained a “gentleman’s code” of secrecy and complicity that insulated the national security establishment from accountability. The CIA’s cultural diplomacy programs, media manipulation, and covert actions abroad all benefited from this elite consensus. In Herken’s analysis, the Georgetown Set’s blend of intellectual sophistication and moral certitude created a closed epistemic world—one in which the assumptions of American benevolence went largely unquestioned, even as U.S. interventions produced destabilization abroad.
Stylistically, The Georgetown Set combines the narrative energy of a social chronicle with the analytical rigor of political history. Herken, a historian of the Cold War and former curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, writes with clarity, wit, and a fine eye for irony. His narrative is rich in anecdote and texture, capturing the atmosphere of Washington dinner parties where Kennan, Acheson, and Alsop debated the fate of nations over cocktails. Yet beneath the elegance of this social world, Herken detects the deeper tensions of American democracy: the concentration of power in the hands of a socially homogeneous elite, and the tendency for personal loyalties to substitute for institutional oversight.
Critically, Herken’s account contributes to the historiography of the American foreign policy establishment alongside works such as Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas’s The Wise Men (1986), which likewise examined the rise of the postwar “Eastern Establishment.” However, where Isaacson and Thomas offered a largely admiring portrait of the statesmen who “made the American century,” Herken’s tone is more skeptical and ambivalent. His Georgetown Set is not merely a cadre of visionary leaders but a self-perpetuating caste whose social intimacy insulated them from democratic accountability and dissenting views. In this respect, Herken’s work resonates with the critical traditions of C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite (1956) and Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback trilogy, which both interrogate how elite networks sustain empire through consensus and complicity.
Nevertheless, Herken avoids reductionism. He portrays his subjects not as conspirators but as complex individuals caught between conviction and hubris. Figures such as George Kennan emerge as tragic characters—intellectually profound yet politically constrained by the very system they helped to build. Likewise, Herken’s treatment of the Grahams reveals the moral tensions within the media establishment: Katharine Graham’s transformation from hostess to publisher of The Washington Post symbolizes both the continuity and rupture of the Georgetown ethos in the wake of Watergate.
From an analytical standpoint, The Georgetown Set underscores the sociological dimension of American power. Herken implicitly argues that social capital—the networks of trust, intimacy, and shared background—functioned as an invisible infrastructure of empire. In this respect, the book extends beyond political narrative to offer a subtle sociology of the foreign policy elite. The salons of Georgetown were microcosms of what Pierre Bourdieu might call “cultural capital”: spaces where legitimacy, influence, and authority were mutually reinforced through social ritual and intellectual discourse.
The Georgetown Set stands as a significant contribution to the study of elite power and Cold War statecraft. Herken’s blend of biography, social history, and political analysis illuminates how a narrow stratum of American society translated its private networks into public policy, shaping the course of global politics for decades. His portrayal of this world—urbane, self-assured, and ultimately self-limiting—offers a cautionary reflection on the relationship between expertise, privilege, and democracy. In recovering the story of the Georgetown Set, Herken provides not only a vivid portrait of an era but also an enduring meditation on the perils of governing the world from the dinner tables of the powerful.
GPT
At its core, The Georgetown Set is a study of how an informal ruling class translated its values and relationships into the architecture of Cold War policy. Herken’s protagonists—Allen and John Foster Dulles, Frank Wisner, Phil and Katharine Graham, George Kennan, Joseph Alsop, Dean Acheson, and others—formed a self-reinforcing community bound by education, class, and ideology. Almost all were products of the Ivy League, the East Coast establishment, and the interwar cosmopolitan elite. Their lives intersected in Georgetown’s drawing rooms, where social conversation often bled into statecraft. Herken’s central claim is that these gatherings were not merely sites of social life but informal extensions of policymaking—spaces where consensus about America’s global mission was forged and reinforced.
Herken’s historical narrative unfolds from the end of World War II through the 1970s, tracing how the Georgetown elite shaped the trajectory of American foreign policy from containment to détente. Drawing on extensive archival research and personal papers, Herken offers rich portraits of figures such as Dean Acheson, whose patrician sensibility epitomized the moral confidence of the American establishment, and Frank Wisner, whose leadership in the CIA’s covert operations embodied the fusion of idealism and intrigue that defined the early Cold War. Joseph Alsop, the influential columnist and tireless networker, serves as a central narrative thread; through him, Herken explores how journalism and policymaking intertwined in an era when the boundaries between media and government were permeable and mutually reinforcing.
One of the book’s major strengths lies in its portrayal of the Georgetown Set as both a social phenomenon and a political ideology. Herken interprets this group as the embodiment of a liberal internationalist consensus that combined anti-communism with faith in American exceptionalism. The Set’s members believed in a paternalistic vision of leadership, guided by a sense of noblesse oblige and moral duty to manage the world’s affairs. Yet, as Herken demonstrates, their insularity and self-assurance also contributed to the arrogance and misjudgments that defined later Cold War debacles—from the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam. The same network that produced the Marshall Plan and NATO also enabled the covert interventions and imperial overreach of the 1950s and 1960s.
Herken’s treatment of the CIA is particularly revealing. The Georgetown Set’s proximity to the intelligence community—many were personal friends of CIA directors, officers, and journalists covering covert operations—allowed for a blurring of public and private roles. Herken argues that this network sustained a “gentleman’s code” of secrecy and complicity that insulated the national security establishment from accountability. The CIA’s cultural diplomacy programs, media manipulation, and covert actions abroad all benefited from this elite consensus. In Herken’s analysis, the Georgetown Set’s blend of intellectual sophistication and moral certitude created a closed epistemic world—one in which the assumptions of American benevolence went largely unquestioned, even as U.S. interventions produced destabilization abroad.
Stylistically, The Georgetown Set combines the narrative energy of a social chronicle with the analytical rigor of political history. Herken, a historian of the Cold War and former curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, writes with clarity, wit, and a fine eye for irony. His narrative is rich in anecdote and texture, capturing the atmosphere of Washington dinner parties where Kennan, Acheson, and Alsop debated the fate of nations over cocktails. Yet beneath the elegance of this social world, Herken detects the deeper tensions of American democracy: the concentration of power in the hands of a socially homogeneous elite, and the tendency for personal loyalties to substitute for institutional oversight.
Critically, Herken’s account contributes to the historiography of the American foreign policy establishment alongside works such as Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas’s The Wise Men (1986), which likewise examined the rise of the postwar “Eastern Establishment.” However, where Isaacson and Thomas offered a largely admiring portrait of the statesmen who “made the American century,” Herken’s tone is more skeptical and ambivalent. His Georgetown Set is not merely a cadre of visionary leaders but a self-perpetuating caste whose social intimacy insulated them from democratic accountability and dissenting views. In this respect, Herken’s work resonates with the critical traditions of C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite (1956) and Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback trilogy, which both interrogate how elite networks sustain empire through consensus and complicity.
Nevertheless, Herken avoids reductionism. He portrays his subjects not as conspirators but as complex individuals caught between conviction and hubris. Figures such as George Kennan emerge as tragic characters—intellectually profound yet politically constrained by the very system they helped to build. Likewise, Herken’s treatment of the Grahams reveals the moral tensions within the media establishment: Katharine Graham’s transformation from hostess to publisher of The Washington Post symbolizes both the continuity and rupture of the Georgetown ethos in the wake of Watergate.
From an analytical standpoint, The Georgetown Set underscores the sociological dimension of American power. Herken implicitly argues that social capital—the networks of trust, intimacy, and shared background—functioned as an invisible infrastructure of empire. In this respect, the book extends beyond political narrative to offer a subtle sociology of the foreign policy elite. The salons of Georgetown were microcosms of what Pierre Bourdieu might call “cultural capital”: spaces where legitimacy, influence, and authority were mutually reinforced through social ritual and intellectual discourse.
The Georgetown Set stands as a significant contribution to the study of elite power and Cold War statecraft. Herken’s blend of biography, social history, and political analysis illuminates how a narrow stratum of American society translated its private networks into public policy, shaping the course of global politics for decades. His portrayal of this world—urbane, self-assured, and ultimately self-limiting—offers a cautionary reflection on the relationship between expertise, privilege, and democracy. In recovering the story of the Georgetown Set, Herken provides not only a vivid portrait of an era but also an enduring meditation on the perils of governing the world from the dinner tables of the powerful.
GPT
January 11, 2015
There's lots of rich, inside detail here that's interesting even if the book as a whole doesn't break much new ground. The story is mostly about Joe Alsop and his younger brother Stewart. For better or worse, they wrote a widely-syndicated, inside-Washington newspaper column in the 50s, 60s and early 70s that influenced Cold War politics and policy making in the formative and frequently disastrous early days of the CIA. The brothers had the same high-born pedigree - elite New England boarding schools, Ivy League universities and social clubs - as many of the spies, journalists, diplomats, office holders and policy makers who descended on Washington after WWII, many of them settling in Georgetown.
The Alsops, relying heavily on their old boy ties, befriended these "best and brightest," cultivated them socially and covered the policies they formulated and the events they shaped. It was a very tightly knit, somewhat incestuous community and the Alsops were very much at the center of it. If you're interested in this and some of the inherent conflicts involved - and it is interesting - the story is also well told by Robert Merry in his biography: "Joe Alsop - Taking on the World." It's a better book, but this one is still a worthwhile read.
The Alsops, relying heavily on their old boy ties, befriended these "best and brightest," cultivated them socially and covered the policies they formulated and the events they shaped. It was a very tightly knit, somewhat incestuous community and the Alsops were very much at the center of it. If you're interested in this and some of the inherent conflicts involved - and it is interesting - the story is also well told by Robert Merry in his biography: "Joe Alsop - Taking on the World." It's a better book, but this one is still a worthwhile read.
March 15, 2015
A simply brilliant study of the spies, journalists, and politicians who fought the Cold War behind the scenes in Washington, led by the complex and fascinating Alsop Brothers. About every ten pages, I found myself sub-vocalizing "Huh! I didn't know that..." Fair, well written and fascinating as hell, any modern American historian (or anyone interested in the Cold War) will admire Herken's work and be grateful for the time spent with his work.
August 31, 2016
Brilliant history of the political elite during the Cold War, centered on the Georgetown Set. I knew a few of these people in their later years. They put the current political class to shame.
January 25, 2021
The book relays the exploits of influential journalists, politicians, diplomats and spies who lived in Georgetown from the end of WWII to the Watergate scandal. The main protagonist is the syndicated columnist Joe Aslop but other characters loom large including Frank Wisner, George Kennan and Katharine Graham. There are a slew of other characters who pass through the revolving doors of government and the Georgetown salons, including Jack and Jackie Kennedy, Chip Bohlen and John Davies among others. Although a quote by Kissinger appears at the front of the book, he does not appear until the very end. The book focuses heavily on the early life of the CIA, the McCarthy Era and ultimately on the Vietnam War.
If you assume as I did from the book's title that it is light reading on Georgetown society, you will be surprised at the dense and dark history it explores. The book is full of details of Georgetown parties, gossip, decor and decorum but it is mainly concerned with Cold War history, including some of the ugliest episodes in government history, such as the excesses of Hoover's FBI, McCarthyism's intellectual victims and disastrous CIA missions foreign and domestic, all culminating in the worst of the worst: the Vietnam War. The book is in many ways a sad and sentimental obituary of a bygone era.
In parallel to the political failures of the US in the post-WWII era, the book traces the social changes and eventual upheavals of the period. Joe Aslop finds himself alone among journalists defending the Vietnam War and hoping for victory while his friends' children pass up invitations to Georgetown salons for anti-war protests and counterculture experiences. In this way, the book reminds me of Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes.
The book serves as an appropriate prequel to Our Man, the Richard Holbrooke biography. As a young man, Holbrooke served with some of the book's characters in Vietnam in the early 1960s and continued to frequent Georgetown's old family houses until his death in 2010. It was a generation that had unquestioned faith in America to good in the world, that tried for a decade to make the Vietnam War right before finally being forced to admit that the war itself was wrong. It was a generation that continued to rely on Old School connections, the comfortable intimacy of the Ivy League of the early 20th Century, even as the country and world around them became too big to rely on one clique's perspective.
Alas, the lessons of government excesses foreign and domestic seem never to be learned by subsequent generations and we continue to repeat the same old mistakes. And in some ways the group think of the Georgetown salons continues to this day, albeit now through self righteous bloggers and Tweeters. And in this way the book reminds me of the lessons of Robert Chambers' Whose Reality Counts which I read for a Development Anthropology class in college taught by a former auditor of USAID projects and which should be required reading for all college freshman.
If you assume as I did from the book's title that it is light reading on Georgetown society, you will be surprised at the dense and dark history it explores. The book is full of details of Georgetown parties, gossip, decor and decorum but it is mainly concerned with Cold War history, including some of the ugliest episodes in government history, such as the excesses of Hoover's FBI, McCarthyism's intellectual victims and disastrous CIA missions foreign and domestic, all culminating in the worst of the worst: the Vietnam War. The book is in many ways a sad and sentimental obituary of a bygone era.
In parallel to the political failures of the US in the post-WWII era, the book traces the social changes and eventual upheavals of the period. Joe Aslop finds himself alone among journalists defending the Vietnam War and hoping for victory while his friends' children pass up invitations to Georgetown salons for anti-war protests and counterculture experiences. In this way, the book reminds me of Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes.
The book serves as an appropriate prequel to Our Man, the Richard Holbrooke biography. As a young man, Holbrooke served with some of the book's characters in Vietnam in the early 1960s and continued to frequent Georgetown's old family houses until his death in 2010. It was a generation that had unquestioned faith in America to good in the world, that tried for a decade to make the Vietnam War right before finally being forced to admit that the war itself was wrong. It was a generation that continued to rely on Old School connections, the comfortable intimacy of the Ivy League of the early 20th Century, even as the country and world around them became too big to rely on one clique's perspective.
Alas, the lessons of government excesses foreign and domestic seem never to be learned by subsequent generations and we continue to repeat the same old mistakes. And in some ways the group think of the Georgetown salons continues to this day, albeit now through self righteous bloggers and Tweeters. And in this way the book reminds me of the lessons of Robert Chambers' Whose Reality Counts which I read for a Development Anthropology class in college taught by a former auditor of USAID projects and which should be required reading for all college freshman.
July 10, 2017
What this book does well in a very crowded field is provide rich detail and a sense of these power players' intense (at times, claustrophobic) interconnectivity. Every place and time has an in-crowd, and Herken maps the core and the boundaries of this group that was semi-in for Truman, frozen out for Eisenhower, and very much in for Kennedy.
At first glance I was worried by the amount of repackaged secondary materials, but Herken gradually gains steam and pitches in a solid amount of original research. Some stylistic quirks were a bit repetitive (see The NY Times review for an extended lament on the topic) but I thought the prose was engaging and full of human interest. I slogged through the entirety of Gaddis's tome on Kennan and yet in many ways I feel like I knew him better here, through the eyes of his friends and contemporaries. Indeed, by the very nature of studying a social set as opposed to an individual or a political institution, Herken captures his subjects as more fully human than they would be if narrated as centers of their own stories or purely through the frame of their professions. Anyone interested in U.S. foreign policy of the time would benefit from picking up this book.
At first glance I was worried by the amount of repackaged secondary materials, but Herken gradually gains steam and pitches in a solid amount of original research. Some stylistic quirks were a bit repetitive (see The NY Times review for an extended lament on the topic) but I thought the prose was engaging and full of human interest. I slogged through the entirety of Gaddis's tome on Kennan and yet in many ways I feel like I knew him better here, through the eyes of his friends and contemporaries. Indeed, by the very nature of studying a social set as opposed to an individual or a political institution, Herken captures his subjects as more fully human than they would be if narrated as centers of their own stories or purely through the frame of their professions. Anyone interested in U.S. foreign policy of the time would benefit from picking up this book.
January 15, 2025
Mostly a dual biography of the Alsop brothers with portraits of the Grahams, George Kennan, Paul Nitze and a few others who lived in Georgetown after the war. I found it sporadically interesting, but there are some dull patches to get through. There's some stuff about the Washington Post, the CIA and other institutions, but it felt like a pastiche at times.
April 18, 2025
This is both a great outline and explanation of America’s Cold War policy. From the development of the CIA, to McCarthy witch hunts, to the long and painful engagement in Vietnam - “The Georgetown Set” provides important background to the whole thing.
January 31, 2019
An interesting premise that drags for too long. Most of the 'history' is correspondence between the foreign policy and press elite of Georgetown which comes across as self-indulgent.
May 22, 2020
An excellent read.
Want to read
December 26, 2020Someone said KB recommended to them.
May 23, 2023
Excellent history of the small group of people who had an outsized say in the decisions that shaped the post Cold War world.
February 1, 2024
If you are a CIA/50s/60s/Vietnam history buff, this is a good alternate viewpoint from the journalists and diplomats in Washington during the Cold War.
March 15, 2025
Excellent writing. fascinating, and very timely compared to the current political climate!
August 14, 2025
The notion of deciding world politics over raucous dinner parties would be a lot more romantic if the KGB hadn’t been running rings around them
September 15, 2025
Amazing research and I'm glad this book exists, but this book was far too wonky for my tastes. The McCarthy and Kennedy-related stories were good, but I could not get on board with the vast passages on post-WWII international politics.
August 28, 2016
Be sure to read this in conjunction with "The Devil's Chessboard" by Talbot.
These two books describe what was going on following WWII for 3 decades which set into being what resulted in mistrust by the great majority of the NOT ELECTED "non-elites" who strongly influenced the decisions which should have been made by those who were elected during these past 3 - 4 decades.
Must read if you really want to know WHO were the two "most important" FDR cabinet members (both brothers - who liked to play chess - by the last name of Dulles - one of whom has the Capital of the United States Airport named after him) who intentionally FAILED in their duties to keep OUR FOUR Presidents -FDR and Truman and Eisenhower and Kennedy - intimitely, timelyt and accurately informed with the details of WWII US and Global military and Political events which endangered the security of the United States during these 4 decades - 1930a to 1960's.
The same author wrote BROTHERS - about Jack and Bobby - and how they survived in their government leadership positions during the 1940's, through the death of the second of the two of them were assassinated.
I would read The Georgetown Set after the Devil's Chessboard but before Brothers since it describes
how the NON ELECTED ELITES of a bunch of well known, well regarded, well born and well connected government executives neighbors in Georgetown had frequent invitation only dinner parties which just happened to coincide immediatly surrounding the dates of major announcements.
This is a very "revealing" book with outsanding well researched and documentd inside the beltway sourced information.
These two books describe what was going on following WWII for 3 decades which set into being what resulted in mistrust by the great majority of the NOT ELECTED "non-elites" who strongly influenced the decisions which should have been made by those who were elected during these past 3 - 4 decades.
Must read if you really want to know WHO were the two "most important" FDR cabinet members (both brothers - who liked to play chess - by the last name of Dulles - one of whom has the Capital of the United States Airport named after him) who intentionally FAILED in their duties to keep OUR FOUR Presidents -FDR and Truman and Eisenhower and Kennedy - intimitely, timelyt and accurately informed with the details of WWII US and Global military and Political events which endangered the security of the United States during these 4 decades - 1930a to 1960's.
The same author wrote BROTHERS - about Jack and Bobby - and how they survived in their government leadership positions during the 1940's, through the death of the second of the two of them were assassinated.
I would read The Georgetown Set after the Devil's Chessboard but before Brothers since it describes
how the NON ELECTED ELITES of a bunch of well known, well regarded, well born and well connected government executives neighbors in Georgetown had frequent invitation only dinner parties which just happened to coincide immediatly surrounding the dates of major announcements.
This is a very "revealing" book with outsanding well researched and documentd inside the beltway sourced information.
January 24, 2016
Really interesting look at how cold war politics was influenced by Ivy League educated generation coming back from WWII, who ended up in government and journalism. Focuses a lot on the beginning of the CIA and it's covert operations. It was interesting to see how much influence Washington D.C. journalists had on policy, and how government officials used their friendships with these journalists to influence public opinion on various foreign policies. I gave the book only four stars because the book focused significantly on columnist, Joe Alsop, and paid less attention to others that I think are equally fascinating, including Phil and Katharine Graham of the Washington Post. Highly recommended read for anyone interested in US history and policy between the end of WWII and the end of the Vietnam war.
March 18, 2015
Very well written and excellent resource for history buffs. The stories about the power brokers of the 60s are fascinating. When the author tells them to you (attended his tour of Georgetown and author talk at Politics&Prose), they come alive as they do on the pages of his book.
I couldn't read the whole thing, though, because I am not a student of history. When I read at night for pleasure, I don't like to have to think too much. I will get the audiobook. I prefer audiobooks for my nonfiction.
I couldn't read the whole thing, though, because I am not a student of history. When I read at night for pleasure, I don't like to have to think too much. I will get the audiobook. I prefer audiobooks for my nonfiction.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 10, 2015
I actually stumbled on some of these people at times, since I live in this world. I enjoyed going back into the war years and how this particular group of people in the White House, in the CIA, in the FBI, in journalism, came together and lived a highly social life that criss-crossed over political divisions and beliefs. None of them come out smelling like a rose. Georgetown now is a ghost of it's former self. I miss the old Georgetown.
December 11, 2015
A well-researched and detailed account of how some of the Cold War-era intelligence and media power players in Washington networked and informed each other's work. Although asides about the Georgetown social scene lighten the narrative, the descriptions of letters, cables, and discussions get a little monotonous. But, this would be an excellent resource for anyone with an avid interest in U.S. intelligence and foreign policy from the late 1940s through the 1970s.
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