Bartholomew Sparrow

Brent Scowcroft is something of a “national secret”—one of the most important figures in modern U.S. global policy—yet one of the least-known. As a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general, former military assistant under President Richard Nixon, and the U.S. national security advisor under presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, Scowcroft has kept his eyes on the big picture. For the past four decades, few individuals have so powerfully embodied American foreign policy.

In Bartholomew Sparrow’s The Strategist, readers will discover not only the man who quietly impacted some of the most crucial decisions in modern history, but gain insight into how American foreign policy is decided and carried out.

At 89, Scowcroft is considered one of the few “wise men” of the nation’s capital: someone who is regularly consulted by top government officials in Democratic and Republican administrations, ranking members of the House and Senate from both sides of the aisle, and the country’s leading foreign-policy journalists.

This is the first complete, never-been-told account of Scowcroft’s political life and influential career. Based on the full cooperation of the subject—with no restraining conditions—The Strategist provides an in-depth portrait of a man whose career has been intimately linked to the great transformations in U.S. foreign policy, from the last third of the Cold War, to September 11, 2001, and up to the present.

Bartholomew Sparrow brings color and focus to the complex and often secretive nature of U.S. foreign policy and strategic adjustments—an intellectual battlefield on which ideas and worldviews clash, in which economics, politics, and strategic concerns intertwine, and in which private citizens and non-office holders may exert as much influence as highly visible Cabinet officials.

With unprecedented insights into the man and his career, The Strategist is a vital read for anyone who wishes to understand America’s changing role in the world.

Bartholomew Sparrow studies American political development and, in particular, the conjunction between the American state and the international system at the University of Texas, Austin. He teaches courses on American territorial expansion, American political institutions and processes, American politics and government, political communication, and the politics of food in America. He has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, and has been awarded the Leonard D. White and the Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha awards from the American Political Science Association. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.