George Kennan and the Restrainers

Kennan was a conflicted, complicated character. Neither he nor his heirs can be easily pigeonholed.

Last week, I published a review of a new biography of George Kennan—Kennan: A Life Between Worlds, by Frank Costigliola—over at the Washington Examiner. It’s a good book, very much worth reading, for the reasons I outline in the review. It’s a warts-and-all portrait of the great Cold War icon that doesn’t necessarily reveal anything substantively new—we…