About this item
For the last sixty years the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record burying its blunders in top-secret archives Its mission was to know the world When it did not succeed it set out to change the world Its failures have handed us in the words of President Eisenhower a legacy of ashesNow Pulitzer Prizewinning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIAand everything is on the record LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than documents primarily from the archives of the CIA itself and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans including ten Directors of Central Intelligence It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror to its near-collapse after llTim Weiners past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as impressively reported and immensely entertaining in The New York Times The Wall Street Journal called it truly extraordinary the best book ever written on a case of espionage Here is the hidden history of the CIA why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.
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.
