Wilford capably draws many historical threads together but doesn’t make a strong enough case for the CIA’s “imperial” nature.
A new look at America’s primary intelligence agency.
For a supposedly secret agency, the CIA looms large in American public life, an institution that is both admired and reviled. Wilford, a professor of history who has written several books about intelligence services, including The Mighty Wurlitzer and America’s Great Game, delves into the history of the agency using as a framework the idea that the CIA created and has maintained a de facto American “empire.” He also examines the “boomerang effect” that CIA activities initiated in the 1970s and after, with the agency becoming the target of savage criticism. Wilford builds each section around a particular individual, noting that the CIA was originally established in 1947 as an office for intelligence gathering and analysis. Soon after its creation, however, it became a vehicle for Cold War adventurism, especially by instigating regime changes through coups. In many cases, this meant supporting brutal and corrupt governments, as long as they espoused strict anti-communist rhetoric. The collapse of the Soviet Union caught many analysts by surprise, although a new generation of enemies gave the CIA plenty to do. Wilford is a knowledgeable guide to the history of the CIA, but his argument for its role as an empire builder is not fully convincing. The narrative arc is often unclear, and the author takes a number of detours—e.g., a lengthy debunking of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories—that are more distracting than informative. Another problem is that this territory has been well covered by such authors as Tim Weiner, David Talbot, Annie Jacobsen, Steve Coll, and Tom O’Neill. It’s difficult to see how this book adds materially to an already crowded genre, in which Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes remains the standard.
Wilford capably draws many historical threads together but doesn’t make a strong enough case for the CIA’s “imperial” nature.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781541645912
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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