The wise men.

• Author: McPherson, Harry

The Wise Men. Walter Isaacson & Evan Thomas. Simon & Schuster. $22.95. There was a time when "The Wise Men" carried mixed meanings. To some within the Johnson administration, it meant the group of six men who had, during long careers in and out of government, advised presidents, managed armies, and negotiated agreements on behalf of the nation. President Johnson assembled them from time to time, hoping to obtain, and normally obtaining, their support for America's involvement in the Vietnam war.

To other audiences, bitterlyfrustrated by that war, a mocking echo followed the phrase. To them "The Wise Men" were famous and reputable figures, most of them retired from public service, who bore no responsibility for either prosecuting the war or ending it. Yet the war was seen as part of the policies they, and others like them, had shaped and administered over a quarter-century, which had thrust us upon the poisoned pungi-sticks of Indochina.

Walter Isaacson's and EvanThomas's book is a largely admiring account of these six extraordinary statesmen who came together to advise President Truman: Dean Acheson, secretary of State; Averell Harriman, armbassador and master negotiator; John McCloy, high commissioner for Germany; Robert Lovett, cabinet secretary; Charles Bohlen, career foreign servant; and George Kennan, thinker, writer, and ambassador.

The book's format--six lives intertwiningthrough history--tends to make more of essentially superficial connections than the facts warrant. Still, this personalizing of government and policy makes The Wise Men splendid reading for those of us for whom Dr. Kissinger's books, for example, are like great lumps of Wheatena.

The character of AverellHarriman--who was not particularly brilliant or articulate, yet was endowed with common sense and an indomitable will--became more important than contests over language in position papers. That character, which drove him through four decades of public service, ultimately determined the positions America took in dealing with the Russians. Dean Acheson's high standards attracted a number of superior men to the State Department, and made him able to see and revere the excellent qualities of his non-Grotonian, non-Yalie boss, Harry Truman.

When presidents needed someoneto manage Germany, deal with the Arab oil states, or organize the production of warplanes, they called McCloy at his Wall Street law firm, or Lovett at his (and Harriman's) investment banking house and...