Government Agencies Books

If the last history I read (The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream) was written at the level of the USA Today, this book is written at the level of the Weekly World News. This book is a series of broad value assertions in the most purple of prose without attribution or logical argument, apparently under the impression that no argument is necessary if the assertion is bold or biased enough.

If this were a first term paper by a 10th grade high school student, the English teach would have wasted a red pen circling sentences and writing "Is this common knowledge? Needs to be foot noted."

But this not a first term paper by a 10th grade high school student, it is an "academic" history text published by Yale University Press.

I wonder if this is what passes for scholarship in the Ivy League these days.

The other customer reviews capture the weaknesses of the book. I would only add that a review laying out these weaknesses at greater length and with more precision was published by Piero Gleijeses in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 34, #3. A brief extract:
"Cloak and Dollar adds virtually nothing to our previous knowledge of the CIA, and, worse,
it is riddled with old chestnuts and misleading statements. It is, almost invariably, shallow."
As he indicates, the problem does not lie with the central theses of the book, which are quite reasonable. But the research is uneven at best, and the presentation surprisingly weak on a number of levels. Gleijeses recommends Evan Thomas' The Very Best Men, which I have not read myself.

The British have a perculiar way of writing, that, coupled with the passive tense, makes this book a nuisance to read. Puruse the on-line exerpts provided by Amazon for a preview.

Other than that it's a good book, not that I've read it, but from what I've heard.

I agree with the first three reviews -- very poorly written.

But a bigger problem is the amazing spin he puts on every event. He is incapable of any charity toward those he dislikes (mostly modern conservatives). For example, he makes no effort to mask his utter disgust for Bill Casey and the Reagan administration. This is fine, but it probably explains his unfounded conclusions about them. Casey started talking back in the early 1980s about American intelligence needing to target groups besides the Soviets, as new enemies were emerging. Instead of crediting Casey for being a visionary, Jeffrey-Jones dismisses this as a cynical attempt at job security, knowing that the Soviet Empire was near collapse. Never mind that virtually no one expected the Soviet downfall even when it happened 6 or 8 years later.

Similarly, Jeffrey-Jones makes general statements without supporting evidence -- the US supposedly pumped huge amounts of money buying up the French news media to counter the rise of the French Left, supported Corsican gangsters, etc. In the end, J-J claims, the French Left failed, not because of such sinister American tactics, though, but the conservativism of the French people. (see p. 156). No evidence for this is presented, no figures or footnotes for the wild claims made etc.

J-J is anecdotal, sensational, imbalanced. And yet, there are some great stories imbedded in all the propoganda and hyperbole. The stuff on George Washington (whom J-J admires) is wonderful.

If you read this book for the stories, just do it with alot of salt.

As I've mentioned in other books, the secret services history is far from simple. The author manages to make it unnerving to read. Not because of facts presented but because there's no sequence, no effort to write the book adequately. He goes un using exaggerted words, which come out of context with the book.
It is as if a highschool student wanted to make a display of his extense vocabulary, grabbed words out of a dictionary and made a great example of not knowing how to use them. The book is also too opinionated. It is leading you to the author's opinion, he leads on a battle without backing, to direct you to think that secret services are over funded, still filled with a seemingly patriotic belief in their good intentions.
On the whole, the author set on an ambitious idea of writing a book, tried to fit anectotic facts with hard history and set his opinions, and managed to make a hideous menage. There are better books on the subject, and I wouldn't recommend it.

Either way i found i couldn't relate. What little i knew about the CIA or specific missions (e.g., TPAJAX, Gautamala, etc.) was either wholly inaccurate, blandly whitewashed, or both! The authors have done an admirable job of what one may say is googlizing research (and a poor one at that) and compiling it all into what may vaguely be called a book.

With poor-quality and error-prone books such as this, esp. one on a topic of much import to world affairs of the past half century, one wonders if the cycle of idiocy isn't perpetuated ad infinitum.

This book is filled with errors. So much is outdated or inaccurate that I wouldn't even donate my copy to the local library.

I bought this book for one specific reason: To learn how CIA agents are trained. There was almost NOTHING about CIA training. Aside from that, the book is good. I give it 2 and a half stars.

This book was not enlighting, alot of the information was out date. The phone numbers to the locations were disconected etc.

This book has information on many goverment agencies, but does not have specific locations on how to get it as an individual.

This book might be a lot more helpful if it were updated regularly. The current--third--edition is from 1986, which is ludicrous with subject matter this volatile. The content itself is a bit too brief, but would still be very helpful if it had been done some time in the last 1-5 years.

PLEASE NOTE---this review is a criticism of the merits of the TEXT in question, and IS NOT to be taken as any form of criticism of the brave agents of the FBI. Thank you.

This Author has been known to ignore events, & cite unobtainable sources that, try as they might, scholars cannot verify.
This author is notorious for errors, serious omissions, & questionable "sources" in his work.
If you are a student, DO NOT CITE THIS MAN'S BOOKS AS SOURCE MATERIAL IN A PAPER OR THESIS! It will quite likely result in a poor grade for your paper.

And remember--no tale becomes History merely because it makes for entertaining reading.

I applaud the spirit of this book. Breuer rightly seeks to demythologize the Depression era gangsters and heroize the G-Men who brought them down. Unfortunately, his book contains so many factual errors that it detracts from his noble purpose. Breuer claims to have drawn his information from FBI files and "authors of integrity, ability, and objectivity." So many erroneous dates, places and events are portrayed here that it bears little resemblance to the many thousands of pages I have examined in the FBI's FOIPA Reading Room, and one of the few published works Breuer cites is Jay Robert Nash's Bloodletters and Badmen, which makes a nice doorstop but is hardly a tool for serious researchers. The FBI deserves better treatment than this!

I have tried many ways but ultimately I gave up, there is no way I can open the files in this CD, if in the process it also doesn't crash my system. Therefore I don't comment about the content in the CD.

1. anything saying this title was produced by the US Govt is ficticious
2. save your money - get a fresh copy of wget and download the same content
3. i normally don't bash things from amazon - this is the WORST purchase

avoid this like the plague - let my misfortune be of benefit to you!
Misleading False Bad Bad Bad

Quality of product was very poor. Most of the information could be obtained via the internet.

This CDROM contains a copy of all the pages on the www.nsa.gov website as it appeared sometime in the recent past. It contains nothing more, nothing less. If this satisfies your needs, then go for it. If not, then simply use your webbrowser to view the website directly.

Also, this "book" is not published by the U.S. Government, it was compiled and published by a company known as: Progressive Management.

kjh

This is a terrible book. I bought this for my child...who found it "extremely boring." Now I understand that most 13 year olds find books boring these days, so I decided to read it myself. Spy stories should be exciting. Mr. Webster makes intelligence seem as exciting as broiling a chicken. Don't let down your kids by buying this book.

I publish books and know they cost a penny a page to produce in lots of 2500 or more.

The title and the content are superb.

The pricing is despicable and I will ignore this book for that reason.

I urge the authors to approach me, I can publish this book for sale at no more than $34.94 (it costs about $10,000 to print, Amazon pays 45% of the list price to publishers).

This is outrageous in every sense of the word. No author should allow their work to be handled in this fashion. The individual chapters should be available directly from Amazon for micro-cash, and this publisher should be put out of business.