The first biography of Hans Morgenthau, the pioneering political philosopher who escaped Nazi Germany and pioneered the approach to international relations-realism-that guided the United States through the Cold War and explains today's world
"International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power." Hans Morgenthau wrote those words at the dawn of the Cold War, as Americans were attempting to understand the emerging global rivalry with the Soviet Union. His book, Politics Among Nations, quickly became the defining textbook on international relations in the country, shaping generations of citizens, scholars, and policymakers. Henry Kissinger, who looked up to Morgenthau, stated, "All of us who taught the subject after him, however much we differed from one another, had to start with his reflections."
Morgenthau's realism was rooted in the traumas that he experienced in post-World War I Germany. When Morgenthau, as a top student in his class, was given the honor of delivering a speech in front of his school, his classmates turned their backs and held their noses at the "stinking Jew." He was spat on and ostracized. When Hitler came to Morgenthau's hometown for his first rally outside of Munich, the police stood aside as the Nazis took over the town. He concluded that abstract ideals could not protect him and that power only yielded to countervailing power.
Morgenthau fled Germany and eventually made his way to the United States. He was advised to give up his dream of becoming a professor and to instead take a job as an elevator attendant or a chicken farmer. After a series of dead-end jobs, he found a temporary position at the University of Chicago, and from there became the country's most influential thinker on international relations. When his peers lined up behind the Vietnam War, Morgenthau made a stand, dismantling the case for the war on realist grounds.
Meticulously researched and masterfully written, David Sacks' The Realist shows how Morgenthau's ideas continue to shape the course of the twenty-first century. David M. Sacks is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. An expert on China and Taiwan, his writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Time, The Diplomat, and The Hill. His analysis on foreign affairs has been carried in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, and the BBC, among other outlets. He lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.
"Hans Morgenthau was the most consequential American political theorist of the 20th Century. Henry Kissinger and others stood on his shoulders. Finally there is a full-bodied biography of the man. David M. Sacks, in discovering Morgenthau for a new generation, also defines foreign policy realism, a concept that has been vastly misunderstood."
-Robert D. Kaplan
"Hans Morgenthau's writings are central to understanding the past, present, and future. In this gripping, definitive biography, David M. Sacks tells the story of the young man who fled Hitler's Germany and connects it to the professor whose ideas and words provided direction for policymakers navigating the Cold War-ideas and words that continue to shape the thinking of almost everyone involved in the debate about America's role in the world."
–Richard Haass
