THE COLD WAR

SHE WAS THE DIVINE hostess; he was the consummate courtier. Like a Washington version of Astaire and Rogers, she gave him sparkle and he gave her gravitas. They were the very definition of the Establishment: blue blood, big money and luxuriant hair, equally at ease at the White House or in her Georgetown salon, filled with French Impressionists and Democratic supplicants. Pamela Harriman, the chic U.S. ambassador to France, and Clark Clifford, the sleek counselor to Presidents, were friends and allies for a quarter-century, from the moment she married statesman Averell Harriman, a poker pal of Clifford's and Harry Truman's. When...