SOURCE: “Right to the End,” in The Economist, Vol. 351, No. 8119, May 15, 1999, p. 4.

In following review, Zelikow presents a positive review of Kissinger's Years of Renewal and discusses the memoir as a means by which Kissinger attempts to refute negative criticism of his foreign policy.

Autobiographies are not biographies, which is one of the reasons why they can be so interesting. Henry Kissinger goes one step further. Like Winston Churchill, he sidesteps simple autobiography, choosing instead to impose his view of his role in history by acting as his own historian. Years of Renewal, which covers the 30 months of the Ford administration, completes Mr Kissinger's three-volume account of his eight years of high office. This book is an apologia—not an apology but a defence in depth against his critics. Mr Kissinger continues to turn the tables on those who criticised his continuation of the Vietnam war for seven...