"Even among the members of his powerful circle, the influential men who shaped the postwar globe and became the original 'best and brightest, ' John McCloy stood as a figure of towering achievement. As a Wall Street lawyer who earned the confidence of captains of industry and presidents; as Henry Stimson's right-hand man at the War Department; as president of the World Bank and chairman of the Chase financial empire; as perhaps the most frequently named presidential adviser, McCloy came to epitomize the American Establishment and the values of a generation that led the United States through bitter war and unparalleled prosperity. In this first complete biography of McCloy, Kai Bird chronicles the very public life of the man Harper's magazine once labeled 'the most influential private citizen in America.' Against the background of World War II, the Cold War, the construction of Pax Americana, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, and events as recent as the Iran hostage crisis, Bird shows us McCloy's astonishing rise and the relationships he developed with fellow 'Wise Men' (George Kennan, Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson, et al), relationships that became the very foundation of American business, economic power, and diplomatic strength. The son of a strong-willed and determined mother, McCloy began life in a drab Philadelphia neighborhood just beyond 'the right side of the tracks.' His father died before the boy's sixth birthday, leaving little money. Fired by his mother's ambition, his own quiet determination, and the values of the Peddie Institute, McCloy began a lifelong pursuit of excellence that would take him to the capitals of the world and the highest echelons of achievement. Though McCloy increasingly ran with (and usually outpaced) 'the swift' and socially advantaged, he never lost sense of himself as the underdog, the poor boy who had to try in order to succeed. Kai Bird brilliantly explores how this self-described 'chore boy' willed himself to greatness with his capacity for work, his ability to inspire trust, and his unfailing willingness to get the job done--without falling prey to self-congratulation or egomaniacal show. From ivy-covered columns of Amherst and Harvard to gilt ballrooms of society's finest families; from tough decisions (like his refusal at the War Department to bomb Auschwitz, his role in the internment of the Japanese-Americans, and his opposition to the bombing at Hiroshima) to economic miracles among the blue-suited aristocrats of the World Bank, Bird captures every facet of McCloy's complicated yet seemingly easygoing nature. We see McCloy's commercial acumen during his days as the most in-demand lawyer on Wall Street; the dictatorial will of the determined ruler during his tenure as high commissioner of occupied Germany; his stoic loyalty as adviser to presidents FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Ford, and Reagan. Finally, during McCloy's era at the Council on Foreign Relations and his reign as esteemed elder statesman, we see, at close range, 'the Chairman' in all his reasoned wisdom."--Jacket.