Review: “Turmoil and Triumph. My Years at the State Department”, by George P. Shultz

 I'm a little late to report, but on New Year's Day 2026, I have finished my first book of the year.

Now, without context, this could sound like rage-bait, given that the book clocks in at approximately 1,138 pages. Truth is, it took me approximately three months or so, so rather quick by my standards. But I enjoyed it wholly, even though my favourite part was the end. Let me tell you why: Shultz described his last post, when the whole DoS staff gathered together with the President &c., and they siad him goodbye. A marching band played “California, here I come”, a song I only know in the rendition of Ray Charles and which matchesh im well, as a Stanford (CA) local. He wrote on the last page that his eyes “welled with emotion“; it meant a lot to me because throughout his tenure, according to his narration, he remained sober, level-headed, the only emotion he let through was good humour, but even then, it was strategically applied to serve his diplomatic strategem of “gardening”. His last day in office was the only one in which he allowed himself to be all human. Politics is no walk in the park; it is, in fact, a walk in the woods. 

    Jokes aside, I also loved this book because it shows that he was not a career diplomat who wanted to earn a solid salary without putting in too many efforts. He was someone who loved doing his job and exercised it with all of his might. He was ready to take risks in order to achieve his goals, and never clutched to his job: Whenever he thought that the President and he were at loggerheads in terms of proposed policies, he offered his resignation to be replaced with someone who agreed with Reagan's suggestions. And speaking of Reagan: Another trait of the book that I appreciated was his readiness to criticise both the administration in which he served and his own actions. Cooper, more than a century ago, wrote that writers must be capable of criticising themselves and perceiving themselves and their work critiically in order to become good writers[1]. Shultz, like his earlier predecessor Dean Acheson, did so in his memoirs, a format wherein others, like Kissinger, used rather to defend their record against their contemporaneous critics. Those two men showed that it can also be used for good, to actually contribute to historiography. It therefore comes as no surprise that Walter LaFeber, who is also quoted on the front cover, writes about the book that Shultz “had delivered a lengthy epitaph for the Soviet system and also the Cold War for which his memoir and Dean Acheson's Present at the Creation (1969) serve as bookends”[2].

The cover of George P.
Shultz's memoirs

    Another way point in which Shultz differs from Kissinger, about whom he wrote in this memoir that “no one we could bring in would be better at coming to grips with a foreign policy issue in all of its dimensions” (page 309)[3], is his approach to his foreign policy: While Kissinger was determined to bring change to governments the way that all Presidents from Eisenhower to himself by violent means if need be, Shultz converged towards it in a mix: Either by force, or through persuasion. Under Reagan, there were the Contadoras where at least local partisans were supported to put a rogue leader under pressure; but there were also regular meet-ups and dialogues to, for example, release hostages and allow the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel or the US. He was often alleged of appeasement, but just like Castro believed that history would prove him right, Shultz had his own record to speak up in his defence. In retrospect, one could claim that the Reagan administration had failed in its pursuit to disarm the US and the USSR, but when one reads through the chapters of work put into the effort, as well as the opening up to the USSR, one can tell that a support in connexion to the Western world was possible when a like-minded government, i.e. a reasonably governed one, is in charge. With Gorbachev, this has been the case as Shultz points out (and for which he was offered to work in the Gosplan (pp. 590—1)). 

    If you want to learn about the Reagan administration in general to not belong to the people who only associate it with a shrinkage in social services and a slew of Rambo references in public speeches, but don't know where exactly, this book is for you: Shultz touches on all passages of America's foreign policy and a little on the inside workings that were more concerned with interior affairs. I found it very enjoyable to read and lively, fluently written. As in every good memoir, you also find a couple of funny anecdotes, such as Shultz's first experience of Parisian traffic (which I could relate) (page 295) or his arduous entry into the German Democratic Republic at a checkpoint[4].

Bibliographical information: Shultz, George P. (1993). Turmoil and Triumph. My Years as Secretary of State. New York City: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 1,138. 

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Index:

1. Cooper, Frederic Taber (1920). The Craftsmanship of Writing. New York City: Dudd, Mead and Company. Pp. 52—3.

2. LaFeber, W. (1993). [Review of Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State, by G. P. Shultz]. The American Historical Review, 98(4), page 1205. https://doi.org/10.2307/2166627

3. Conversely, Kissinger wrote in an obituary published in the Wall Street Journal on February 10, 2021, that Shultz was “skilled in presenting his convictions, but above all practiced the art of making controversy superfluous by encouraging mutual respect. Trust, George used to say, is in the coin of the realm.” ( https://www.henryakissinger.com/articles/george-shultz-had-a-wise-and-discerning-heart/ ). To this I must make just one correction, although it may turn out to be a quote apocryphally affiliated with the person who he allegedly quote: On page 35, Shultz mentions that “Trust is the coin of the realm” was coined by Republican strategist and Presidential Advisor Bryce Harlow. But as I said, it may have originally been his own bonmot, just like Dean Acheson liked to “quote” former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes with the words: “These little fragments of my fleece that I have left upon the hedges of life.” He immortalised those words also in his collection of miscellaneous writings entitled “Fragments of my Fleece”.

4. Until I realised that this was from Dean Acheson's (1969) “Present at the Creation”; New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. Pp. 342—3. My bad, sorry!