From Holocaust to Harvard

July 15, 2014
Stoessinger (Global Diplomacy/Univ. of San Diego; Crusadersand Pragmatists: Movers of Modern American Foreign Policy, 1979, etc.)outlines his progress from childhood in Vienna on the brink of war to Prague,Shanghai, and finally, America and a taste of fame and fortune.Though the author lost his grandparents to the gas chambersduring the Holocaust, he escaped the worst of it, despite the implications ofhis book's title. Stoessinger, his mother and stepfather, whom he despised,left Nazi Europe just in time. The young emigre, with the help of caringstrangers, attended Grinnell College. Soon, headed for the academic brightlights and Harvard, he left his wife in Iowa. In Cambridge, he associated withthe likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger and was eventually noticedas a rising political scientist. Accepting a position at the UnitedNations, Stoessinger craved further fame and fortune. Despite a distinct fearof marriage, he married again, fathering a daughter. He was also attractedto a fetching world-class swindler. She was his lover for whom, at herinstruction, he did many patently stupid favors, which resulted in anindictment as a participant in fraudulent activities. A plea bargain allowedthe author to teach prisoners instead of serving time. Released from hismarriage's "banality," he launched into another passionate liaison, but thatdidn't thrive, either. Stoessinger also purports to have been too affected to visithis mother as she endured Alzheimer's. Though the author offers a fewinteresting anecdotes, he is often self-congratulatory and engages in excessivename-dropping. The text carries to excess the ration of pride generally grantedmemoirs, and his egotistical "hope to leave behind a spiritual legacy" to helpmankind abandon war rings false.A picaresque memoir that tells much less than all.

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