For those of us who have followed the 60 years of CIA missteps, errors and failures, serially, this heavy-handed tome of a book offered up unofficially as "official CIA defense of its failures" has to be a big disappointment. For although it admits to failures at every turn, it does so in a clinically neat and minimalist way that glosses over every single caper, and in a way that guarantees that this, the details of the CIA's official admissions of guilt, have already been uncovered and better told elsewhere. In short, this is not the "Come to Jesus" version of CIA history that we were all looking for but the "forced admission" version that has actually come about only after everyone of the Agency failed capers have consistently been exposed elsewhere.

This is the sanctioned, authorized and official version of guilt, "told minimally and unofficially."

In this sense, it is more akin to the reporting of football scores when the visitors have beaten the home team by a very wide margin: The winner is given credit for being the better team; the reasons for losing are glossed over; and the overall implications of the lost to the team's future mission and to the morale of the fans are either ignored completely, or, are just buried deeply on the inside pages of the report. In other words, this is the "officially sanctioned propaganda," "hangout defense" version of the CIA'S sordid history.

That it took so many pages to give this minimalist rendition is very unfortunate indeed since the "cat has long since been out of the bag." To admit guilt without showing the taxpayers where the skeletons are buried is not contrition, but hope that the rules of the game will still be altered in ones favor so that the game can continue at a later time under more favorable conditions. And equally important, it also means that evidence uncovered elsewhere, by other more novel means, will continue unchallenged by the official version and will thus remain the standard of reliability and proof about what actually goes on inside the agency's walls.

Wisner's Story

The agency came into being as a political fluke at the prodding and instigation of a handful of Eastern establishment elitist cowboys and ex-soldiers of fortune. It began several steps behind the best intelligence agencies in the world and had to rely on two of them: the British, and by default of circumstances, the German Abwehr (through Reinhart Gelen) to get fully into the post WW-II game. Because it was forced to evolve through trial and error, the CIA was destined to never quite catch up to its competition. This was true in part because it was poorly served by all of its directors, and because it never completely embraced what was its only important mission: to be able to see over the horizon and give the President information on what was happening in the World. On this most important of missions the agency failed miserably and repeatedly throughout its history: It missed all of the seminal events of our era: Castro's take over of Cuba, the fall of Communism, the 911 terror threat, and Saddam's WMD, just to name the most spectacular of a very long list. Somehow, the CIA maintained a great reputation even though it continued to have a terrible record of repeated failures.

But it was also true because, even in the face of its repeated failures, in order to close the "appearance gap," the agency had learned to promote itself: Early on it had learned how to be a "political player" before it had learned how to become a "spy agency." "Kow-towing" to its political authorities by giving them "shaded intelligence" because that was what they wanted to hear, rather than what was true, became a part of the agency's professional signature. In addition to "kow-towing," it also learned a slew of other bad habits: such as how to cover-up its shortcomings through lies and exaggeration, how to play by its own rules, and most importantly, how to remain accountable to no one.

The Agency was eventually saved from itself by the advent of electronic and technological intelligence, which have made the old spy games anarchic if not completely obsolete. Sixty years on, and when we needed a finally airing of the CIA dirty laundry, all we get here are carefully "vetted" cover stories. I am very disappointed.

Three Stars.

The 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 moral conduct. But apparently the CIA believed that morality was impractical, and that for the United States to "survive in the real world" one must dispense with morality and act in a manner that is similar, if not identical, to the conduct of one's "enemies."

The author's narrative is informal and sometimes reads as an action story, and those readers who need more details, even after reading such a sizable book, are given 170 pages of notes and references at the end of the book. It is readily apparent that governmental hierarchies do not intimidate the author, as some authors might be if they took on such a damming account of an organization that is sometimes venerated beyond rational measure. The author completely demolishes the Hollywood paradigm of intelligence agencies, with its glorification of violence by spies and other intelligence agents. Indeed, in many parts of the book the agents and support personnel of the CIA are made out to be inept, bumbling fools.

The threat of world domination by "Communism" is given as the CIA's primary excuse for acting as it did, with the overthrow of the governments of Iran, Guatemala, and Brazil being good examples, and the list goes on. The author does not elaborate in too much detail on the real reasons behind these overthrows, such as that of satisfying economic interests. But his account of the history of the CIA appears believable, and like any other historical document it contents would have to be crosschecked, this of course taking many years of effort. And in this regard, a nagging irony surrounds the reading of this book, and indeed of any study of the institutions of the American government: one finds oneself in the peculiar situation of needing to gather intelligence on the CIA and these other institutions, so as to make sure they do not encroach on fundamental rights of individuals, both living in the United States and elsewhere. An organization that was invented to gather intelligence is now the target of intelligence gathering by the very citizens it was designed to protect. This is indeed an irony, and a very sad one.

But those readers who want the bare, naked truth about the CIA will find this book to be a good start, and reading about its dastardly actions is good discipline for anger management. The author apparently got his information from personal interviews with many of the leaders of the CIA, and from intelligence documents that are now available in the public domain. Credibility of these documents of course is always an issue, but even if say 95% of the content of this book is misleading or even completely false, the other 5% is enough to make the CIA an illegitimate organization, and one that should be dissolved entirely. The victims of the CIA are many, whether they were Iranian citizens during the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadeq, or those of Chile in the overthrow of Salvador Allende, and they should not be forgotten. Perhaps a monument should be built with their names inscribed on it, and this monument placed in the location that the CIA building now occupies. Beside their names will be those of the presidents and CIA directors who ordered their slaughter, whether directly or indirectly.

Written 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 from its inception into the post 9/11 period.
Like many other National Security insitutions, the CIA was improvised at the onset of the Cold War. Its impetus came from Truman's need for reliable intelligence about the Soviets. What emerged, however, was qutie different from what Truman desired and contained systemic flaws that would haunt the CIA througout its history. While Truman wanted an intelligence service, the CIA rapidly became dominated by covert action operations. The emphasis on covert action not only came at the expense of intelligence gathering but often undercut the efforts of the State Dept. and other foreign policy actors. The agency was enmeshed in inter-departmental rivalries with the Pentagon, the FBI, and the State Department. A creature of the Preident, the CIA depended on Presidential support to maintain its bureaucratic position. This gave rise to a sometimes disastrous propensity to tell the President what he wanted to hear rather than the actual facts.
Weiner describes a remarkable number of often disastrous misadventures. Many of these are well known. The Bay of Pigs debacle, the consistent failure to assess Soviet capabilities accurately, the devastating effects of the paranoia of the long-time Counter-Intelligence Chief, James Angleton, the almost slapstick of the Iran-Contra scandel, the devastating failure to be honest in the leadup to the Iraq war, are all laid out well. What Weiner particularly well, however, is to show that this miserable performance was the agency's norm. Weiner describes a large number of horrifyingly incompetent covert operations and intelligence failures. Even apparent successes, like the overthrow of the Mossadegh regime in Iran, had adverse long-term consequences.
This book is very informative but is really high quality journalism as opposed to rigorous history. Legacy of Ashes is mainly a history of the agency's covert operations. There is little description and no analysis of the agency's intelligence analysis and no discussion of why this was such a failure. While this is a fairly long book, there is little effort to provide context. Many of the strategic failures of the CIA, particularly its role in supporting corrupt and authoritarian regimes in the developing world, were really the result of basic American policy failures during the Cold War.
Weiner makes the basic point that the CIA never fulfilled the basic purpose of an intelligence agency, to provide reliable information about the capabilities and intentions of America's foes. This lamentable fact remains true to this day.

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.

I 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 in weird time-skips -Weiner starts to get into something interesting, then he drops it to run after a new shiny horror 3 years later, only to MAYBE come back to where he started pages and pages later, or maybe not.If you want some quick fast thin overview of CIA foulups, then probably this will be just fine. If you REALLY want any sort of informed reporting you will have to go to books that focus on particular incidents, accidents, or spheres of influence. I imagine that this book was quite the talk of the Georgetown High Drinking Set (Weiner seems obsessed with his villains' alcohol intake) for about a week, and then forgotten.

For 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 the big picture. Unless you think that the big picture is that the CIA's history is an impressive collection of blunders, with almost no successes (too bad to be true, I think). Anyway, the anecdotes are more interesting when they refer to events closer in time (and even more when they deal with the Bush II Administration). The final chapters of the book made a more engaging read.

An additional problem is that the author's opinion and point of view is too evident (thus the non-historic character of this work). He does not even try to hide his personal take on many international past events. A more nuanced approach would have been welcome.

I am not an expert on the CIA. Therefore, I do not feel prepared to opinionate about the accuracy of Weisner's assessment. But his style has pushed me a little back. I liked the book, but it could have been better. Weisner has the contacts and the information, but he lacked the skill to put together a real piece of excellent, objective and valuable research. I hope that in a second edition, he comes with a worthier work.

This book might as well be a "how to fail" manual for any modern American bureaucracy.

In the early years the company is run by dynamic and entrepreneurial founders and mavericks who do a whole lot with very little and are driven by passion and patriotism. They come up with amazingly creative and innovative plans and solutions that actually work and save the day. A company is born.

Then a bunch of alcoholic guys show up swaggering and bragging like mavericks but without the brains or foresight- lots of people and projects die needless deaths due to gross incompetence, stupidity and lies. Lies even to the president who is making policy and war decisions. The wagons begin to circle closer to protect the tribe. On the eve of the Chinese invasion of Korea--the CIA knew NOTHING but said the Chinese would never attack. Thousands of Americans paid for that lie with their lives. The CIA was convinced Cuba would never let Soviet missiles on the island. We almost had WW3 over that little screw-up.

Then the career bureaucrats and managers show up and try to put their stamp on things. Budgets bloat. Egos inflate. Nepotism, cronyism and careering become rampant. All mistakes are carefully hidden or blamed on others. Luck (like the Iranian coup) is trumpeted as a major intelligence and covert ops success. Back stabbing, positioning, scheming, and of course the constant bragging and lying all contribute to a loss of focus on the original mission and create an echo chamber of yes men and allies at the top, with seething morale-sapping resentment, fatigue and bitterness in the ranks. Everyone is just waiting for their pensions and reading newspapers/blogs each morning to gather intelligence. Critical data on Vietnam is suppressed for political reasons.

Then comes Mr. Clean-it-all-up from outside the company. Everyone hates him. Paranoia, backstabbing and lies and bitter rivalries emerge. The agency starts making mistakes like assassinating or bombing the wrong targets, spying on their own citizen, flooding problems with millions of dollars as a "solution," They new guy fires a bunch of people that don't share his views, and he leaves within a couple years with a promotion to the state department, a cabinet position or hey-maybe even president. Since the CIA warlords can't hire or convert people that actually speak foreign languages they just payoff warlords around the world to do their dirty work. Payrolls included at various times: The Shah of Iran and his corrupt sister, the King of Jordan, The warlords in Sudan now performing genocide, Noriega, a two-bit assassin named Saddam Hussein, a terrorist that blew up 77 Cubans on an airplane, opium warlords in Laos,etc etc etc.

The company is then left in the hands of a bunch of naive, inexperienced, RCG interns brimming with ideas and energy but scarred by premature jading. For a brief moment, an entrepreneurial and can-do esprit de corps grips the troops. Congress or the board of directors steps in the fix what is hopelessly broken and installs- a guy who ends up being charged with conspiracy, fraud, money-laundering and fixing million-dollar contracts for his friends in the beltway.

At some point- the Soviet Union collapses- but nobody is even aware of it.

The amateurs left over are promoted beyond their abilities and end up kidnapping, torturing and killing people on accident in their efforts to "get ahead." The lifers resign in disgust. Private intelligence-gathering start-ups sprout all over Washington. Outsourcing spirals out of control. The brain drain becomes a brain vacuum. All new CIA hires adopt the 5-year plan: Get in, make connections, get out, and get paid.

At the end of the day, billions and billions of dollars were wasted on pretty much nothing constructive.

So much for Wild Bill Donovan's legacy.

No exagerations and no fabrications.
That's the way it is with the CIA.
A profound digging into the mechanism and operational structure of the agency.
Overpowering.
A great deal of information.
Hot!

For the first two thirds of Legacy, the author applies an agnostic and universal critique of the OSS and CIA. This bumbling agency never really did any intelligence gathering, they were wrong more than right and they were always infiltrated by counter spies. The reader begins to trust Weiner as a fair and balanced historical critic of every Presidential administration until James Earl Carter.

Unlike earlier presidents, Carter used the CIA for socially pure purposes. He sided with the Communists to remove imperialist white governments in Africa. Weiner praises Carter - our nation's worst president - even though the African countries he "saved" are now in economic ruin. He gives Carter a pass on the hostage taking in Iran. Iranians were only expressing their anger over the matter of the Shah, after all.

The one President who stood down the Soviet Union is portrayed as a senile old bafoon who "fell asleep during CIA briefings after eating some jelly beans". The condemnation continues under GHWB and GWB as the reader would expect at this point. Weiner rightly attacks recent Preidents for focusing on Communism while the Soviet Union was already in collapse. He doesn't seem to accept the premise that anything the US or CIA did during the cold war had any positive impact on fostering that collapse.

Weiner used his book as an opportunity to skewer Oliver North and Reagon over Iran Contra after he'd earned the reader's confidence by appearing to be "fair and balanced" for the first 300 pages.

The author seems to have done a well researched and factual report of events. His interpretation is, however, open to criticism in my mind.

I've followed the CIA and the many missteps for some time. Weiner gives us a comprehensive report on the machinations of the CIA - some successes, many failures. He details the personalities of many of the characters that inhabited the agency, some weird souls indeed. The extensive note section ( 170 pages) supports the depth of his research. His account differs from some other reports, particularly the involvement of Jack and Robert Kennedy. Much of this information has remained hidden until very recently. This readable book sheds some much needed light on the operation of spook city.

The omitted organizations

Tim Weiner's book on the CIA is excellent, so is Ron Suskind's "one percent doctrine", they are in fact too good. Why has it suddenly become possible to write such self critical books? It seems, they would have been impossible a few years ago. We must ask what has happened that make them possible, and who profits from them. I am not suggesting a conspiracy, certainly not on the part of these two authors, but I am asking why it suddenly has become possible to find all these excellent sources in such large numbers. The answer is in part found by looking at what and who are not criticized. People of influence feel they can talk more freely.

Weiner's book, besides delivering a crushing critic of the CIA, has little critic of all other parties and organizations involved, other intelligence organizations, the previous presidential administrations and the multinational companies, almost to the point where he gives the picture of a CIA operating in a vacuum, all by itself, like a dog which has run away from home. The book has a message which is shared by many power centers in the US: the CIA has not been worth the money and must be redone (human rights are secondary in the book).

Suskind's book has the same accusing, almost prosecuting, form as Weiner's. This is clearly the expression of a US ready to deal with two organizations in its centre; in the first case the CIA, in the other the Bush administration. The US sense of crises has been strengthened by the failure in Iraq and now with the ongoing financial crises. Americans have always been good at detecting problems and making changes, even if it means doing the same failures again.

Will these processes lead to actual prosecutions in the case of members of the Bush administration? Probably not, at least not in the US. (Cheney like Kissinger may avoid personal trips to Europe). Will they lead to a fundamental change in US foreign policy, less aggressive? Probably not, no leading power regardless of its nationality has been willing to let go of an upper hand. The weakness lies in part in human nature in part in the nation state logic. It is not a typical American problem, or even a Rebublican. unfortunately not, it would have been so much easier.

Weiner's book is a clear message to the next administration to redo the CIA (again). To make this transmission easier he has, intentionally or not, omitted many of the organizations which work in symbiosis with the CIA. This is the book's biggest weakness as a critical piece of work.

Tim Weiner's unrelentingly critical and scabrous account of the CIA is occasionally interesting from a chronological standpoint; he outlines the history of the outfit. The book is in the tradition of Seymour Hersh et al, supposedly a revelation, but mainly a rehash of leftist crit-think.
Frankly not worth the paper it is printed on.

Very interesting book, especially for one who has lived through most of this history. Jumps around a bit chronologically. Confirms what other Agencies & Dept's. claim, i.e., none of our governmental agencies communicate with each other to the detriment of national security. A lot of "turf wars."

CIA operations were not well thought out, very shallow and as Dick Holm was quoted during the Kennedy years, he rued "the ignorance and the arrogance of Americans arriving in SE Asia...We had only minimal understanding of the history, culture, & politics of the people we wanted to aid..." Some personnel in our various Agencies now try to remedy this attitude, by achieving a greater understanding of these things.

This is an important book because of the insight it provides about the nature and history of the CIA's work. It's hard to read, partially because it is so repetitive. According to this book, throughout its history the CIA has failed spectacularly at essentially every major task it has undertaken. And, in so doing, it has caused thousands of deaths, wasted billions of dollars, operated lawlessly and shown total disregard for the wishes of the presidents it has "served". It's not a pretty picture.

The more failures that are chronicled, the more a reader almost has to conclude that the job of gathering good, actionable intelligence is essentially impossible. There's no place for CIA operatives to go to learn how to do their jobs effectively. They have talent and drive, at least at the beginning of their CIA careers, but they are not superhumans and are overwhelmed by their tasks.

I wish there could have been an appendix or a companion book in which another author might take issue with the way this book presents the CIA's history - saying it's not really this dismal and here's why. Maybe that book is out there and I should look for it, but meanwhile I'll never think very highly of the CIA after reading this one.

This fascinating, provocative and relevant book is a history of the first sixty years of the CIA compiled solely from first-hand reporting and primary documents. It is a devastating account of how the agency lurched from crisis to crisis, unable to establish a first-rate intelligence organization in an increasingly complex and dangerous world.

What began as a successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the military intelligence unit during WWII, the CIA was established to combat the emerging threat of the Soviet Union at the tail end of that war. The goal of the CIA was to ensure that there would never be a second "Pearl Harbor," but the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989 left the CIA somewhat aimless without its original raison d'etre. With the horrendous attack on 9/11, the initial reason and great fear that brought the CIA into existence had already come to pass.

The ultimate findings of this award-winning study is that each President due to their own idiosyncrasies or failings left the CIA worse off than the previous administration. Some chose incompetent directors, others chose to ignore sound advice, while still others made decisions due to political criteria rather than substantive ones. Some presidents made the CIA a personal surveillance agency against presumed domestic enemies, while others pressured the CIA to tailor its findings to fit White House policy to the detriment of the organization and the country.

This caustic indictment suggests critical errors were made by and to the CIA throughout its history. Its choice of gadgets over spies left it totally unaware of many critical developments. Its love of high wire covert actions over time-consuming intelligence gathering often left it bereft of knowledge and in embarrassing international situations.

The conclusion that Weiner has come to is that the CIA ended its sixty-year history the same way Eisenhower evaluated it at the end of his administration - as a "legacy of ashes."

Armchair Interviews says: Most thought-provoking information.

Conclusion - the book is a limited hangout and Weiner is a rich asset - he says, in so many words: stupidity always trumps conspiracy - in essence the official cover for the 9/11 coup and the Global War Of Terror: it's blowback and incompetence that's to blame - in light of this, 2 things to never forget:

1. "Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the state." - James Jesus Angelton - Director of CIA Counter Intelligence (1954-74)

2. "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby - Director of the CIA (1973-76)

Tim Weiner's "Legacy Of Ashes" is a valuable work of scholarship that dives into the complex history of the CIA and in the process also gives us a valuable set of histories of our country and its role in the world. Some have accused Weiner of being "biased" or promoting some sort of "liberal agenda," this is far from the truth, Weiner is simply processing and creating a narrative culled from thousands of declassified documents and known facts. This is not the latest work from Al Franken or Keith Olbermann, this is a historical document. The reactions a few right-wing reviewers have posted on this page says more about them than about Weiner's work.

Weiner starts from the top, from the early days following World War II when President Truman replaced the OSS with the CIA which he at the time considered to be a more efficient, precise, official form of "newspaper" for the commander and chief to consult to be aware of the state of the world. However it didn't turn out this way, as the history progresses we see how the agency turned more into some sort of militant force that was eventually used more for the purpose of influencing or altering history instead of recording it. In clear, fluid detail, Weiner documents the first laboratories for covert operations that the CIA used, mainly Iran and Guatemala. In Iran the CIA helped the British overthrow the elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh because his nationalization of the country's oil was seen as a grave nationalist threat, the Shah was then re-installed and given military aid for decades. Latin America followed with a coup against the elected government Jacobo Arbenz, who challenged foreign corporate dominance of his country and paid for it with his presidency which was replaced by a brutal military junta. This was only the beginning however, of a longer, sadder story that would extend into countries like Vietnam, Chile and Greece.

"Legacy Of Ashes" has supposedly made headlines with some stunning revelations found in the new documents, but some the histories explored here are already well-known, such as the CIA-backed coup against the elected Allende government in Chile or the botched Bay Of Pigs invasion. What Weiner does so well is put these and lesser-known events in a greater context, he details how ignorance and arrogance have created an intelligence community that puts our security at greater risk. He provides a record of lying and plotting that is a peek into the dark corners of government. Consider the sections on Iran where we learn the CIA had a four-man, FOUR-MAN team in Tehran at the time of the Islamic Revolution, with none of them even speaking Farsi. It turns out CIA operatives failed to foresee the revolution because they were too busy dining with the Shah, the same as in Cuba where CIA agents miscalculated Fidel Castro's popularity because they spent more time indulging in the Batista regime's decadence than actually gathering solid intel on Cuban life, the status of the country and what led to the rise of Castro. This of course then led to lying and deception that guided the U.S. into the disastrous idea of launching an invasion on Cuba at the Bay Of Pigs.

Other revelations in the book are more insideous and intriguing such as the possible connection between the Kennedy White House and the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, the assassination of president Diem in Vietnam and the many unanswered questions surrounding JFK's own murder, the investigation becoming a further mess because director Richard Helms wanted to keep CIA covert ops in areas such as Cuba away from the public eye. There are also fascinating, disturbing moments of lesser-known history like Richard Nixon receiving thank you funds from the fascist Greek junta the U.S. helped install in 1967.

Weiner goes on the cover some of the CIA's most notorious scandals like Iran-Contra and more importantly, recent intelligence failures that could have contributed to 9/11. "Legacy Of Ashes" covers all this and more in an accessible, very readable and clear style where Weiner compiles a massive amount of information, facts, figures, events, names and dates but never confuses the reader and never muddles the presentation. This is one of the best recent works on the workings of American government and the best book available on the workings of the CIA. Weiner never takes a sensationalist tone and is very professional and objective, he is simply presenting the information as it is and draws conclusions and observations from hard facts, there is never a sense of Weiner theorizing or jumping into unknown territories. Anyone who takes the time to process the information can see clearly why Weiner comes to certain conclusions as to the status of American intelligence services.

"Legacy Of Ashes" is a great record of some 50 years of American history, this is the kind of book Americans should be looking into to understand our past and to better understand where we are now. And Weiner presents it in a way where the average reader can indulge and come away better informed and aware. Reading this you realize the works of authors like Newt Gingrich are just political junk food, here is a vital, important resource.

Great info - the things we always believed (at least if you were raised by liberal parents) corroborated by recently released CIA files. Shocking to see how we information was manipulated and hidden, and what a terrible job our government did for us. The money and lives lost to hubris is painful to witness.

That said, the book is not particularly well-written. Compared to the great writers of modern history (Caro is my personal favorite) this book fails to engage. It is easy to put down, and hard to pick back up.