Thomas C. Mann's first State Department position was in 1942 as a “lowly assistant” in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he was tasked with monitoring Nazi shipping in the South Atlantic.Footnote ¹ According to historian Thomas Tunstall Allcock's new book on Mann, perhaps the greatest reevaluation of Mann's career should also come from Uruguay, in 1967, even though Mann had retired the year before the meeting. Allcock argues that the meeting was a culmination of Mann's career objectives in Latin America as the Lyndon Johnson administration met with other American Presidents and sought to reinvigorate the Alliance for Progress by focussing on regional economic integration, hemispheric development, and cooperative infrastructure projects. Bucking most historical interpretations of Mann and Johnson as abandoning the last shreds of the Good Neighbor policy in favor of both overt military force and diplomatic intervention for Cold War concerns, Allcock argues that this meeting was emblematic of Mann and Johnson's more balanced approach towards Latin America than most historians have acknowledged.

Indeed, Allcock's book provides a more nuanced view of both Johnson and Mann's legacy in the region. He argues against viewing Mann as a conservative force against progressive policy ideals and Johnson as a naive foreign-policy administrator who should be primarily remembered for the effects of his Vietnam debacle. Instead, Allcock places Mann within a framework of deep expertise in the region and a career which spanned twenty-four years. Allcock derives this interpretation from extensive primary research that include presidential libraries, State Department archives, and personal papers. In this traditional diplomatic history, Allcock argues that there is sustained engagement from Johnson on Latin America where he sought a policy of integration and development. Allcock acknowledges both successes and failures of the administration, overall examining the complex decision-making process. He sees not just cursory engagement and an overriding Cold War fear, but a new framework that lacked the splashy policy headlines of an Alliance for Progress, but did embrace ideas of development and multilateralism, even as these objectives came up short.

As the first monograph focussed on Mann (with an emphasis on his years in the Johnson administration), Allcock goes deeply into well-known episodes with an emphasis on Mann's role in determining policy outcomes. The book starts with Mann's biographical background and core beliefs in the first chapter. It traces his rise through the State Department that cemented his deep belief in New Deal economic measures and the Good Neighbor policy, which remained part of Mann's ethos through all the various posts and presidencies.

Chapter 2 examines the transition between the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, focussing on tensions between Kennedy's Cabinet and Johnson's new appointees. This bureaucratic infighting negatively affected Mann's rise in the State Department, as, despite his background in Latin America, he was viewed with suspicion and, at times, disdain due to his Texas background and close relationship with Johnson. Kennedy's holdovers saw Mann as a conservative force that overturned Kennedy's more progressive policies. However, Allcock maintains that a close examination of Kennedy's Latin American policy in 1963 reveals more continuity than is acknowledged by both his aides at the time and historians since. He contends that even Kennedy was looking into a reevaluation of the alliance by 1963 because the targets had been too high and promised too much. Allcock argues that Johnson and Mann offer a continuation of policies, not a radical departure.

In chapters 3 through 5, the book examines major policy decisions from Panama to Brazil and the Dominican Republic, among others. By focussing on Mann's role in each case, Allcock adds fantastic nuance behind decisions, highlighting successes, but also where reliance on ambassadors or Cold War fears produced poor results. Even after Mann had officially left the administration, Allcock highlights his unofficial role, documenting the advice that Mann gave Johnson during his last years in office that influenced the direction of his Latin American policy. Allcock stresses that even as Vietnam took more time and energy from the President, Johnson did not abandon policy towards Latin America, but stayed personally involved in trying to reshape and reinvest in relations.

In the end, the book is not so much about Mann's entire career, nor even Johnson's entire Latin American policy, but instead is a persuasive, although partial, revisionist account that offers a new look at Mann and Johnson's view towards Latin America. Allcock seeks to overturn the view that Johnson was merely an interventionist or a transitional President.Footnote ² Through Mann's policymaking decisions, Allock offers a different vantage point that stressed economic development and regional integration, but was, in the end, mostly undermined by intra-administration fighting, a poor relationship with the press, and Cold War security priorities. In so doing, Allcock succeeds in reframing both Mann's and Johnson's legacy in the region.

Johnson's strengths rested on his domestic acumen; he never intended to be a foreign-policy President even though he ended up one. Thus Mann played an outsized role as confidant and high-level diplomat that influenced the very direction of Johnson's Latin American policy. Allcock's excellent book rethinks the best-known episodes of the Johnson administration through this lens. Readers are left wondering how more voices from Latin America might have impacted Mann or Johnson's thinking. This alternative approach would be particularly interesting considering the centrality of Mann in Allcock's story as the overarching voice on Latin America even when he moved to a non-Latin America-focussed position in State and retired from an official role. Other ambassadors, policymakers, and Latin American voices could add a further layer of perspective and complexity to understanding Johnson's evolving policies.

Overall, this is an excellent book in rethinking the historiography of both Johnson's foreign policy towards Latin America and the controversial figure of Mann, with deep historical research that is worth reading for anyone interested in Johnson's foreign policy, Mann's career, or US–Latin American relations during the Cold War.