US national security advisers come in all shapes and sizes. Few have had such a big an impact as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wasn’t even an American until obtaining citizenship as an adult. Zbig, as friends knew him, was born in Poland and at the start of the Second World War found himself in Montreal, where his father was the consul general. His family hit hard times when the Polish state was wrung through the dual mangle of the Nazi and Soviet invasions in 1939. But young, resilient Zbig was a brilliant student who won scholarships as easily as he could lift his pen. In 1950 he crossed the frontier for Harvard and began a meteoric career in the American academic universe.

Edward Luce has written an impressive account of Brzezinski’s life in vivid colours, having had access to the man himself in life and his diaries and papers since his death. No biography of Brzezinski is likely to surpass this one in empathy.

Brzezinski was one of the most prolific and influential scholars of international relations in the postwar period. Like his slightly older German-American rival Henry Kissinger, he never confined himself to his university desk but sought public impact. Both wrote copious analyses and crib sheets for leading politicians in the Cold