Andreas Papandreou

Greece in the 1960s produced one of Europe''s arguably most controversial politicians of the post-war era. The contrarian politics of Andreas Papandreou grew out of his conflict laden re-engagement with Greece in the 1960s. Returning to Athens after 20 years in the US where he had been a rising member of the American liberal establishment Papandreou forged a social reform-oriented nationalist politics in Greece that ultimately put him at odds with the US foreign policy establishment and made him the primary target of a pro-American military coup in 1967. Venerated by his admirers and despised by his detractors with equal passion the Harvard-educated Papandreou left in his wake no clear-cut answer to the question of who he was and what he stood for. Andreas Papandreou chronicles the events struggles and ideas that defined the man''s dramatic intrigue-filled transformation from Kennedy-era modernizer to Cold War maverick. In the process the book examines the explosive interplay of character and circumstance that generated Papandreou''s contentious but powerfully consequential politics.