Present at the Creation

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department is a memoir by US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, published by W. W. Norton in 1969, which won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for History. Acheson explained the title: Following World War II, the US administration faced a task "just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis: That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process."