GADDIS' BOOK IS TURNING INTO THE SORT OF DISASTER I HAD FEARED

Kennan vilified. 


With what justification, one cannot really assess.


One really ought to read someone like Tuchman, The Proud Tower, or Fitzgerald, or even Kennan, not Gaddis, to place in context Kennan's early remarks in diary entries. 


For his politics context, I would say, perhaps,  something like E H Carr, The Crisis 1919 to 1939.