SOURCE: “Recovery from Vietnam and Watergate,” in The Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 91, No. 82, March 25, 1999, p. 21.

In the following review of Years of Renewal, Walker favorably discusses Kissinger's resistance to “Wilsonianism” and his detailed portrait of Gerald Ford as president.

What is the appropriate role for the United States to play in the world? That question lies at the heart of the third volume of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's memoirs, covering the final days of the Nixon administration through the transition after the 1976 presidential election, when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford and Dr. Kissinger said farewell to Foggy Bottom.

Kissinger, in his day reviled by the left as too hard-line against US adversaries and by the right as too accommodating toward them, was no Realpolitiker in the classic sense. But he clearly saw—and sees—a need to counter the Wilsonianism that he believed pervaded the State...