Word: talbott
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...FEAST YOUR EYES; but American readers, close yours. Strobe Talbott's Endgame, a chatty account of the second phase of the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT II), will bore all but eager Soviet intelligence agents and the hardiest of cocktail party devotees. And that's a shame because buried below all the gossip, Talbott offers some perceptive explanations of the nuances of superpower bargaining...
...Talbott's strained prose imparts the true ambiance of the negotiations--slow-moving, technical and petty. His writing is often as convoluted as the bureaucratic garble he describes. A diplomatic correspondent for Time, Talbott portrays a Soviet missile as if he were one of the mutants worshipping the bomb in the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Sounding much like a budding David Halberstam, he writes...
...Talbott's weaknesses as a writer are revealed by his heavy reliance on anecdotes which he uses to spice up his sometimes detailed and statistical approach. While some of the stories are snappy--and help the otherwise plodding text move along--others read like a hyped-up version of The President's Plane is Missing. When he recounts a bargaining exrhange between former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger '50 and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, he builds his narrative to the point where the two are talking about the relative effectiveness of the B-1 and B-52 bombers...
...Talbott wallows in spicy off-the-record quotes. Using the words of one U.S. negotiator, he describes the letdown which followed a setback in the negotiations "as a kind of post-coital depression." While this technique might work in a Time article, it just can't sustain a 270-page book...
TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott last week reported from Havana these conclusions on the summit and its consequences: "Castro has clearly succeeded in his main objectives. At the very least, Cuba has won the appearance of a ringing endorsement from the Third World of its military intervention in Africa. Though there have been dissenting and cautionary voices, the vocal majority have applauded Cuba's championship of liberation movements. In the future, Cuba and those countries and guerrilla groups seeking its aid will be able to point back to this summit and what will probably be called the 'Havana...