Through the History of the Cold WarIn September 1952, John Lukacs, then a young and unknown historian, wrote George Kennan (1904 2005), the U. S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, asking one of the nation's best known diplomats what he thought of Lukacs's own views on Kennan's widely debated idea of containing rather than militarily confronting the Soviet Union. A month later, to Lukacs's surprise, he received a personal reply from Kennan. So began an exchange of letters that would