"Dazzling and instructive . . . [a] magisterial new book." -Walter Isaacson, Time

Henry Kissinger offers in World Order a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder. Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the modern era-advising presidents, traveling the world, observing and shaping the central foreign policy events of recent decades-Kissinger now reveals his analysis of the ultimate challenge for the twenty-first century: how to...

Henry Kissinger analyses how six extraordinary leaders he has known have shaped their countries and the world

'Leaders,' writes Henry Kissinger in this compelling book, 'think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. They must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain....

Kissinger's six leaders are Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher. All of them were formed in a period when established institutions collapsed all over Europe, colonial structures gave way to independent states in Asia and Africa, and a new international order had to be created from the vestiges of the old. Kissinger penetratingly analyses each of these leaders' careers through the highly individual strategies of statecraft which h...