Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA

0/5 ( ratings)

The Very Best Men is the story of the CIA's early days as told through the careers of four glamorous, daring, and idealistic men who ran covert operations for the government from the end of World War II to Vietnam. Evan Thomas re-creates the personal dramas and sometimes tragic lives of Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and Desmond FitzGerald, who risked everything to contain the Soviet threat.

Within the inner circles of Washington, they were regarded as the best and the brightest. They planned and acted to keep the country out of war -- by stealth and "political action" and to do by cunning and sleight of hand what great armies could not, must not be allowed to do. In the end, they were too idealistic and too honorable, and were unsuited for the dark, duplicitous life of spying. Their hubris and naïveté led them astray, producing both sensational coups and spectacular blunders like the Bay of Pigs and the failed assassination attempts on foreign leaders in the early 1960s. Thomas draws on the CIA's own secret histories, to which he has had exclusive access, as well as extensive interviews, to bring to life a crucial piece of American history.

Language: English

Pages: 432

Format: ebook

Release: October 01, 1995

ISBN 13: 9781439127759

The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA

0/5 ( ratings)

The Very Best Men is the story of the CIA's early days as told through the careers of four glamorous, daring, and idealistic men who ran covert operations for the government from the end of World War II to Vietnam. Evan Thomas re-creates the personal dramas and sometimes tragic lives of Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and Desmond FitzGerald, who risked everything to contain the Soviet threat.

Within the inner circles of Washington, they were regarded as the best and the brightest. They planned and acted to keep the country out of war -- by stealth and "political action" and to do by cunning and sleight of hand what great armies could not, must not be allowed to do. In the end, they were too idealistic and too honorable, and were unsuited for the dark, duplicitous life of spying. Their hubris and naïveté led them astray, producing both sensational coups and spectacular blunders like the Bay of Pigs and the failed assassination attempts on foreign leaders in the early 1960s. Thomas draws on the CIA's own secret histories, to which he has had exclusive access, as well as extensive interviews, to bring to life a crucial piece of American history.

Language: English

Pages: 432

Format: ebook

Release: October 01, 1995

ISBN 13: 9781439127759

More books from Evan Thomas

The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World

4.2/5 ( ratings)

In the Shadow of the White House: A Memoir of the Washington and Watergate Years, 1968-1978

4.3/5 ( ratings)

Obama's Last Stand

3.5/5 ( ratings)

Inside the Circus: Romney, Santorum and the GOP Race

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Election 2004: How Bush Won and What You Can Expect in the Future

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World

RFK Funeral Train

4.4/5 ( ratings)

The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Ike's Bluff

4.2/5 ( ratings)

The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies

2.5/5 ( ratings)

The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA

The Statesman: Reflections on a Life Guided by Civility, Strategic Leadership, and the Lessons of History

The Mueller Report: The Findings of the Office of the Special Counsel on Russian Interference in the 2016 Election

The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898

First: Sandra Day O'Connor

Broken Pumps and Promises: Incentivizing Impact in Environmental Health

Robert Kennedy: His Life

Bin Laden: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of the Most Notorious Terrorist in History

Back from the Dead: How Clinton Ended the Republican Revolution

Rate this book!

Write a review?