Is the point of Mr. Gelb’s encomium to Richard Holbrooke to satirize a whole literary genre? Or is it a tribute of one public intellectual to a man who wielded power and so a tribute to a sort of corrupt deference to a man of power by a man of the intellect? The question can remain open but it qualifies as a question worth asking. If one really wants an honest assessment of the public career of Mr. Holbrook rather than a record of his unapologetic arrogance and its attendant unbridled egotism, Robert Scheer on the truthdig website has provided the necessary antidote to the maladroit apologetics of Mr. Gelb.

https://www.truthdig.com/report/item/speaking_ill_of_the_best_and_the_brightest_20101221/?ln

Mr. Gelb can be informative as to certain fascinating details of Mr. Holbrooke’s role in the continuing American Political Melodrama and his aspiration to greatness; and the call to service in the New Imperial Mandate of the Post Cold War, but this is directly attributable to Mr. Gelb , the historian and litterateur.   

The salient points of Mr. Holbrooke’ diplomatic career are the untidy masses of corpses,  that act as makers for each one of his diplomatic endeavors. Mr. Gelb’s piece can be viewed as the tribute of one member of the American Foreign Policy establishment to another.