The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made is a 1986 book by
Walter Isaacson and
Evan Thomas. It describes the actions of a group of United States government officials and members of the East Coast foreign policy establishment who, beginning in the 1940s, developed the
containment policy of dealing with the
Communist bloc, and crafted institutions and initiatives such as
NATO, the
World Bank, and the
Marshall Plan. An updated edition of the book was released in 2012, as well as a "Quicklet" summary of the book.