Gifted Greek is an account of Greek leader Andreas Papandreou seen through the eyes of a former U.S. diplomat, Monteagle Stearns, who knew him well. As neighbors in Athens in the early 1960s, Stearns and Papandreou, along with their spouses, became good friends with a shared interest in politics. Stearns was then a political officer at the U.S. embassy, responsible for tracking Greece's fractious centrist politicians, including Papandreou's father. After a successful, twenty-year career in U.S. academia, Papandreou was in Athens setting up a U.S. foundation–funded economic research center as he agonized over whether to launch a career in Greek politics. He finally did so in 1964, a year after Stearns left Athens for a new posting in the Congo.
Entering Greek politics as a Western-oriented, Kennedy-era modernizer, Papandreou enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity that was cut short by the 1967 military coup. When the U.S.-backed dictatorship collapsed in...