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Books : Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIAIn association with Amazon.comby: Tim Weiner  List Price: $16.95 Amazon.com's Price: $11.53 You Save: $5.42 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 327.1273009 EAN: 9780307389008 ISBN: 0307389006 Label: Anchor Manufacturer: Anchor Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 848 Publication Date: May 20, 2008 Publisher: Anchor Release Date: May 20, 2008 Studio: Anchor Sales Rank: 2107 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: With shocking revelations that made headlines in papers across the country, Pulitzer-Prize-winner Tim Weiner gets at the truth behind the CIA and uncovers here why nearly every CIA Director has left the agency in worse shape than when he found it; and how these profound failures jeopardize our national security. Average Rating:
 Rating: - History of a newspaper that killsThe author begins the book by saying that all Harry Truman wanted was a newspaper. If the author's history as outlined in this book is to be believed, what Truman and his predecessors eventually got was an organization that could be described as a superposition of incompetence and savagery. With each passing paragraph the reader is introduced to an organization that fancied itself above the law and indulged itself in every manner of vile actions, many of them going completely beyond the pale of acceptable ... Read More Rating: - UsefulWritten by an experienced journalist, Legacy of Ashes is simultaneously a serious effort at a compreshensive narrative of the CIA's history and a scathing indictment of the agency's performance. Weiner's account is based on analysis of an extensive amount of documenation, including once classified CIA internal histories, and a large number of interviews of former CIA personnel, including several former Directors. Organized chronologically in a series of short chapters, Weiner traces the Agency's vissicitudes ... Read More Rating:  - 'Must Reading'This book or tapes should be read by anyone who recognizes the critical importance of Intelligence to those who are responsible for leading our country in the perilous enviornment we must navigate in. Unhappily, on balance, we appear to have done a pretty inadequate job to date. This book uses no annonymous sources but only CIA documents to show how bad our history has been in serving all occupants of The White House. If ever accurate information and analysis is needed it is now. Read this incredible saga. Rating:  - The Worst of The CIAI had really high hopes for this book, having had it suggested to me by so many people, but alas, it just doesn't live up to the hype. Like any Best of/Worst of album the book is long on slick cuts, short on substance. So, Weiner hates the CIA. He regards everything that they did as being flawed by lies, deception, incompetence, folly, drunkeness. Ok. He feels that vast amounts of humna and other capital have been squandered to no good end. Ok. BUT in terms of writing the whole thing falls flat & gets lost ... Read More Rating:  - A journalistic account of the CIA's historyFor those who are looking for a historical work on the CIA this is not their book. The author is a journalist, and the book is written in journalistic style. Good journalistic style, and probably good journalism, but this is not history. Telling the history of the CIA, an institution that has been so intimately involved in American foreign policy, is a daunting task. Given the limitations of space, Weisner has tried to do a good job. Not sure if he has succeeded. He focuses on the anecdotic, not providing ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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