A vigorous survey with specific case studies and a useful bibliography for further study.
A nuts-and-bolts look at the history and uses of intelligence.
Veering off from his earlier Military Intelligence Blunders (1999), this more technical manual by British military historian Hughes-Wilson gives a solid overview of the importance of secret intelligence and case studies of successful and failed spying, from the earliest times to leaks by Edward Snowden and Al Jazeera. First, the author gives a quick survey of the history of intelligence, specifically in war, with an eye toward Machiavelli’s canny statement: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” Secrecy and surprise are tantamount to making good decisions, and Hughes-Wilson asserts, “military defeats are almost invariably associated with intelligence defeats.” He cites Hitler’s foolhardy attack of the Soviet Union without grasping Stalin’s ability to muster nearly 600 divisions against the Nazi onslaught. The author delineates the process of intelligence gathering (the “intelligence cycle”) and the difference between HUMINT (human intelligence) and SIGINT (signals intelligence). The former entails the motivations of the spy himself: money, ideology, coercion, ego, or grievance. Hughes-Wilson offers famous examples of each, such as the stunning identity of a Soviet spy “at the very top of the Nazi war machine,” code-named “Werther,” whose intelligence was crucial in defeating the Nazis on the eastern front: the personal secretary to Hitler, Martin Bormann. SIGINT includes code-breaking, such as the work of the fabled Room 40 in the Old Admiralty Building in London during World War II and the U.S. Navy’s cryptological breakthroughs in the summer of 1942, which allowed it to trap the Japanese fleet off of Midway Island. Surveillance (e.g., the Cuban missile crisis) and deception (D-Day) garner their own chapters, followed by the famous cases in which interpretation and dissemination of vital intelligence was ignored—most famously in the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the author rightly notes, technological leaks (e.g., Wikileaks), terror, and cyberwar present new intelligence challenges.
A vigorous survey with specific case studies and a useful bibliography for further study.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-302-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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