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“A secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a
shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political, and media
power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post-imperial Europe; and
an essential allegory for our own times.”
— John le Carré, #1 New York Times bestselling author
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“The Dulles brothers, one a self-righteous
prude, the other a charming libertine, shared a common vision: a world run from
Washington by people like themselves. With ruthless determination, they
pursued, acquired, and wielded power, heedless of the consequences for others. They
left behind a legacy of mischief. Theirs is a whale of a story, and Stephen
Kinzer tells it with verve, insight, and just the right amount of indignation.”
— Andrew J. Bacevich, New York Times bestselling author of Washington Rules
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“As someone who reported from the Communist
prison yard of Eastern Europe, I knew that the Cold War really was a struggle
between Good and Evil. But Stephen Kinzer, in this compressed, richly detailed
polemic, demonstrates how at least in the 1950s it might have been waged with
more subtlety than it was.”
— Robert D. Kaplan, New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography
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“A disturbing, provocative, important book.
Stephen Kinzer vividly brings the Dulles brothers, once paragons of American
Cold War supremacy, to life and makes a strong case against the dangers of
American exceptionalism.”
— Evan Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of Ike’s Bluff
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“Kinzer tells the fascinating story of the
Dulles brothers, central figures in US foreign policy and intelligence
activities for over four decades. He describes US efforts to change
governments during this period in Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cuba, and other
countries in exciting detail.”
— John Deutch, former director, Central Intelligence Agency
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“[A] fluently written, ingeniously researched, thrillerish
work of popular history…Mr. Kinzer has brightened his dark tale with an
abundance of racy stories. Gossip nips at the heels of history on nearly every
page.”
— Wall Street Journal
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“Anyone wanting to know why the United States is
hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book…A riveting
chronicle.”
— New York Times
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“A riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned
murder, casual elimination of ‘inconvenient’ regimes, relentless prioritization
of American corporate interests, and cynical arrogance on the part of two men
who were once among the most powerful in the world…In his detailed,
well-constructed, and highly readable book, Stephen Kinzer, formerly a foreign
correspondent for the New York Times
and now a columnist for the Guardian,
shows how the brothers drove America’s interventionist foreign policy.”
— New York Times Book Review
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"[The
Brothers] is a bracing, disturbing, and serious study of the exercise of
American global power…Kinzer, a former foreign correspondent for the New York
Times, displays a commanding grasp of the vast documentary record, taking the
reader deep inside the first decades of the Cold War. He brings a veteran
journalist’s sense of character, moment, and detail. And he writes with a cool
and frequently elegant style.”
— Washington Post
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“[A] fast-paced and often gripping dual biography.”
— Boston Globe
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“Stephen Kinzer’s sparkling new
biography…suggests that the story of the Dulles brothers is the story of
America.”
— Washington Monthly
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“In addition to providing illuminating
biographical information, the author clearly presents the Dulles family’s
contributions to the development of a legal and political structure for
American corporations’ international politics. A well-documented and shocking
reappraisal of two of the shapers of the American century.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“Two exceptionally important stories take up the
bulk of Kinzer’s book, and both are told with considerable insight and
disciplined prose. The first is the tale of the ‘secret world war’ of American
violence and political subversion in the early half of the Cold War, and this
is the story Kinzer most clearly wishes to tell. The second, closely related,
is an institutional saga of the consequences that arose from the shared power
of two brothers who simultaneously ran the CIA and the state department—the
covert and public faces of American foreign policy.”
— Bookforum
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“No one
shaped US Cold War foreign policy more than the Dulles brothers—John
Foster Dulles in public as secretary of state and Allen Dulles in secret
as head of the CIA. This joint biography paints a portrait of the pair,
showing how their upbringing and early professional experiences shaped
their careers. David Cochran Heath offers a capable narration that
carries the listener along. He’s careful not to get in the way of the
action in the fast-paced portions of Allen’s spy life, and he doesn’t
let some of Foster’s diplomatic efforts bog down into wonkiness.”
— AudioFile