Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner
Tim Weiner . Unknown Year . English
All-powerful, brilliant, decisive, ruthlessly effective ... this is the image of the CIA as portrayed in countless films and novels. It is wrong. This shocking book, based on thousands of declassified documents and interviews with agents at all levels, shows the reality behind the glamorous myth: a blundering, chaotic and dangerously incompetent organization, so ineffective it was nicknamed 'Can't Identify Anything' by Nato forces. In a story of botched coups, missed targets, lost operatives and fatal errors, Tim Weiner shows how the CIA now poses a threat not only to the security of the US, but the world.
Categories: Graphic Novels & Comics (Fiction)
About the Author
Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his reporting and writing on American national security. As a correspondent for The New York Times, he covered the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon in Washington, and reported on war and terrorism from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and many other nations over the course of 15 years. His new book, ONE MAN AGAINST THE WORLD: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, was hailed as "[an] eye-opening study of Richard Nixon's booze-soaked, paranoid White House years and the endless tragedies they wrought" by Kirkus Reviews prior to publication. "It speaks volumes about Nixon that there is still more to learn about him, 40-plus years after Watergate. It speaks further volumes that what we are learning is even worse than what we knew." Publisher's Weekly said ONE MAN AGAINST THE WORLD is a "devastating account of Nixon's presidency, drawing on documents declassified in the last seven years.... Chilling excerpts from tape recordings that have only recently been made accessible include cold-blooded exchanges between Nixon and [Henry] Kissinger in which the two debate the merits of committing war crimes in order to win in Vietnam. This is powerful raw material, but Weiner's brilliant turns of phrase transform it into something extraordinary." His previous books include ENEMIES, a history of the FBI acclaimed as "fascinating" by The Wall Street Journal. LEGACY OF ASHES, his chronicle of the CIA, won the 2007 National Book Award; it was a bestseller across the United States and around the world. He has lectured at the CIA, universities, political think tanks, and Presidential libraries. He directs the Carey Institute's nonfiction residency program in upstate New York and teaches as the 2015 Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton.
