[Ludwig Martens (right), representative of the Soviet government, with his secretary, Mr. S. Nuorteva (left), and Madam Nuorteva, posed on roof, for motion picture camera crew]

The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made is a 1986 book by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas about a group of U.S. government officials and members of the East Coast Establishment. The book starts with post - World War I period and continues in the immediate post-World War II international development, describing how the group of six men of quite different political affiliations developed the containment policy of dealing with the Communist bloc during the Cold War and crafted institutions such as NATO, the World Bank, and the policies of the Marshall Plan. Six people who were influential in the development of Cold War: 1. Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under President Harry Truman 2. Charles E. Bohlen, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the Philippines, and France 3. W. Averell Harriman, Special Envoy for President Franklin Roosevelt 4. George F. Kennan, Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia 5. Robert A. Lovett, Truman's Secretary of Defense 6. John J. McCloy, a War Department official and later U.S. High Commissioner for Germany.

During the administrations of Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, the National Photo Company supplied photographs of current news events in Washington, D.C., as a daily service to its subscribers. It also prepared sets of pictures on popular subjects and undertook special photographic assignments for local businesses and government agencies. The bulk of the images were created between 1909 and 1932. The photographic files of the National Photo Company, including an estimated 80,000 images (photographic prints and corresponding glass negatives), were acquired by the Library from its proprietor Herbert E. French in 1947.