A wholly satisfying biography of the man whose vision continues to guide American intelligence operations—both the daring...
An exhaustive but never dull account of the founder of America’s original intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
Former Time correspondent Waller (A Question of Loyalty: General Billy Mitchell and the Court-Martial that Gripped the Nation, 2004, etc.) has plumbed archives and newly declassified OSS files to produce a definitive life of William Joseph Donovan (1883–1959). The son of Irish immigrants, Donovan was already a successful lawyer when his exploits in World War I earned him the Medal of Honor. Afterward, he dabbled in Republican politics and bitterly opposed the New Deal, but travels during the 1930s convinced him of the danger of war. After Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt began cultivating anti-isolationist Republicans. Aware that America’s primitive, parochial intelligence agencies were split among feuding fiefdoms in the Army, Navy, State Department and FBI, Roosevelt persuaded Donovan to fix matters. Taking office in July 1941, he created a worldwide organization that ran espionage networks, dropped saboteurs behind enemy lines, supplied guerrillas from France to China and dispensed propaganda. Waller delivers an entertaining account of the OSS’s colorful personalities, devious plots, triumphs, debacles and often nasty fireworks that occurred under Donovan’s charismatic leadership. Ironically, he never united the many feuding intelligence entities—nor has anyone since. The military fiercely guarded their agencies, and the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover detested Donovan and worked hard to undermine him. Waller concludes that OSS operations contributed only modestly to the war effort. Its successor, the CIA, has not done better, and experts still debate whether spying and covert operations do more harm than good.
A wholly satisfying biography of the man whose vision continues to guide American intelligence operations—both the daring and unconventional thinking and the delusions.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4165-6744-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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