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The Ambassadors: Thinking about Diplomacy from Machiavelli to Modern Times

Robert Cooper

3 Reviews

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Biography: historical, political & military, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, International relations, Diplomacy

Diplomacy in the West from Richelieu to Kissinger: the great diplomats of history and what their achievements tell us about the most important issues of our time

History does not run in straight lines. Instead of inevitable progress, what we get is more often false starts, blind alleys, random events, good intentions that go wrong. Robert Cooper's incisive and elegant book is therefore not a continuous diplomatic history. Richelieu and Mazarin inhabited a 16th-century world we can hardly imagine today, but it is from their time that we can begin to see the outline of today's Europe.


The Ambassadors includes a brilliant analysis of the people who built the Western side of the Cold War. Henry Kissinger is a pivotal figure in the post-war world, and his story is in some ways typical: he failed in his most important aims and succeeded in ways he never expected. Robert Cooper's pieces together history and considers the illuminating fragments it leaves behind.

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Praise for The Ambassadors: Thinking about Diplomacy from Machiavelli to Modern Times

  • Robert Cooper has a lifelong experience of diplomacy in the British Foreign Office and the European Union. His new

  • book is based on wide reading and meticulous attention to detail . . . A vivid and penetrating account of the major international crises of the past 70 years and the people who handled them - THE SPECTATOR

  • Told with erudition and con molto brio ... The author's reflections on the nature and uses of power as on the art of negotiation deserve full attention - FINANCIAL TIMES

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