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Overview
Throughout time, leaders at the pinnacle of power - popes and kings, presidents and prime ministers, even czars and generals - have subscribed to the belief that they can change the course of history, not by the force of arms, but through charm, skillful negotiation, honesty, deceit, and all the other arts of peaceful human exchange. Now, in Playing God, Charles L. Mee, Jr. - author of the critically acclaimed Genius of the People and Meeting at Potsdam - reproduces seven singular moments when heads of state have come together to decide the future of the world. He examines the uses of summitry, from the directness of Pope Leo's confrontation with Attila the Hun outside Rome to the theater of Henry VIII and Francis I's meeting on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; from the surprise encounter between Cortes and Moctezuma to the intricacies negotiated by Metternich and Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna; from the ironies of Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George's summit at the Paris Peace Conference to the unintended consequences of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt's gathering at Yalta; and finally to Gorbachev's desperate appeal to the G7 nations in London to be included in their powerful club. Mee peeks through the curtains of diplomacy to reveal the hidden agendas and the glorious personalities at work. Taken together, these seven fateful moments are bracing and humbling reminders of the enormous complexity and mystery of human affairs.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Mee, who has written books about Meeting at Potsdam and The End of Order: Versailles 1919 , clearly has a taste for those moments in history when world leaders grab at the brass ring of history. Here he selects seven such pivotal encounters and constructs lively scenarios rich in data. In insightful extended essays, he analyzes Attila the Hun's confrontation with Pope Leo in 452; Cortes and Moctezuma at Tenochtitlan in 1519; the meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520; the Congress of Vienna in 1815; the Paris Peace Conference in 1919; Yalta, 1945; and the G7 summit in London in 1991. Mee shows these meetings of ``great'' men to be as much about human complexities as diplomatic, a mix of hubris and compromise, blunders and wily statecraft, good intentions and broken trust. Photos not seen by PW . (Sept.)Book Details
Published
August 1, 1993
Publisher
New York : Simon & Schuster, c1993.
Pages
269
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780671678883