Word: grunwald
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When Henry Grunwald left Vienna in August 1938, he was a boy alone, carrying a single suitcase and fleeing the Nazis. When he returned in 1988, he was the ambassador of the United States of America, riding in a limousine with the Stars and Stripes fluttering from its fender. His first assignment was to register his adopted country's displeasure with the Nazi collaborator Kurt Waldheim, who had become his homeland's President...
...intervening years Grunwald, now 74, learned English, met Marilyn Monroe and scores of Presidents and Prime Ministers (in roughly that order of importance), became the editor of this magazine and then editor-in-chief of its parent company and thus one of the most powerful people in American journalism. His memoir, One Man's America (Doubleday; 658 pages; $30), is an often eloquent and emotional account of this astonishing passage, filled with the triumphs of a determined and intelligent man successfully navigating the strange waters of an adopted country. He is candid, as well, about his occasional failures...
...Grunwald grew up in America, he first learned to love his new country, and later, in fine journalistic tradition, to criticize it too. "I love America because it took me in as a young refugee from the madness of wartime Europe and allowed me to make it my country," he writes. "I love America because it did the same for millions of others from everywhere. I love it because it is an experiment in living and governing beyond anything dreamed of before. But I'm also disappointed by America because it seems in danger of bungling the experiment...
...brings this same insight and detachment to his encounters with the leaders of his new country. He admits that he enjoyed being seduced by John Kennedy but that he also saw in J.F.K. "signs of ruthlessness and the glib assumption of privilege." Grunwald never believed that Kennedy, had he lived, would have reversed the direction of American involvement in Vietnam, but, he adds, "part of me loved America loving Kennedy...
...Grunwald made many forays around the world, adding his own impressions to those of the correspondents who reported for his magazine. Like most of those in power at the time, he was reluctant to give up on America's war in Vietnam, but after one trip to Saigon, reported back to his colleagues in New York that the best result one could reasonably expect was a standoff with North Vietnam. He takes responsibility, however, for writing, above a TIME essay defending the war, this headline: THE RIGHT WAR AT THE RIGHT TIME...