EINSTEIN, LEWIS

EINSTEIN, LEWIS (1877–1967), U.S. diplomat and author. Einstein was born to a wealthy New York City merchant family. He entered the U.S. diplomatic service in 1903. His postings included Paris, London, the delegation to the Algeciras Conference, Peking (Beijing), Constantinople during World War I, and Prague throughout the 1920s. Einstein's score of books and nearly 100 published articles, reviews, notes, and comments embraced the diverse worlds of Renaissance art, modern biography, Tudor manners, Civil War diplomacy and, always, contemporary geopolitics, preserving the often fragile link between diplomacy and letters. One of the most prophetic of his articles, "The United States and the Anglo-German Rivalry" (National Review, 60 (1913), also explained Einstein's realistic approach to international affairs. His memoir A Diplomat Looks Back (1968) provides insight into Einstein's deftness as a diplomat as well as an appreciation of his refined and skeptical world view. Another prominent work is Holmes-Einstein Letters: Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Lewis Einstein, 1903 – 1935 (1964). (James F. Watts, Jr.)