Book Description
A master spy's memoir of playing the game in the most strategically influential country in 1960s Africa.
Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country had declared its independence, the army had mutinied, and governmental authority had collapsed. As he crossed the Congo River in an almost empty ferry boat, all he could see were lines of people trying to travel the other way--out of the Congo. Within his first two weeks he found himself on the wrong end of a revolver as militiamen played Russian-roulette, Congo style, with him.
During his first year, the charismatic and reckless political leader, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered and Devlin was widely thought to have been entrusted with (he was) and to have carried out (he didn't) the assassination. Then he saved the life of Joseph Desire Mobutu, who carried out the military coup that presaged his own rise to political power. Devlin found himself at the heart of Africa, fighting for the future of perhaps the most strategically influential country on the continent, its borders shared with eight other nations. He met every significant political figure, from presidents to mercenaries, as he took the Cold War to one of the world's hottest zones. This is a classic political memoir from a master spy who lived in wildly dramatic times.
Customer Reviews:
CoS Congo.......2007-08-09
An excellent biography, discusses what happened during the Cold War in the Congo from his point of view. I found it an enjoyable read.
Exciting times.......2007-07-05
A good book giving an overall flavor of the Congo in the early 60's. It would be nice if Devlin had filled in more details however perhaps this is proscribed in his publishing agreement (I presume that he had to run this through the CIA before publishing it). You do get an idea of just what a CIA COS does to try to guide events to follow US policy. He's rather blase about the physical risks of operating in an unstable environment although maybe this is because he survived to tell the tale. I don't think that I would have my family at my side in such an environment.
Charts his many encounters and is a top pick.......2007-06-17
Author Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country declared its independence, the army mutinied, and the government had collapsed: as he entered the country, streams of residents were fleeing. During his first year he was accused of murdering a charismatic political leader, saved the life of the man who carried out the military coup, and found himself confronting unheard-of challenges in Africa. CHIEF OF STATION, CONGO charts his many encounters and is a top pick especially recommended for college-level and military holdings strong in African culture and history.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
-.......2007-06-12
A little too general, very maddening that he left out so many details. But a necessary read for those interested in the Congo in the 60's
History Lessons.......2007-06-07
This book rewards its readers with good deal of information on a variety of subjects. It undoubtedly provides a very accurate account of the struggle of the former Belgium Congo to become a variable nation state. In the course of doing this, its author provides a plausible description of the chaotic condition of an imploding nation state and its leading political players of the period, including the controversial Patrice Lumumba and the man who turned out to be his chief rival Sese Seko Mobutu. Finally the book opens a window on how the U.S -Soviet Union Clod War rivalry played out in an newly independent African state like the Congo.
On a rather different level, Larry Devlin provides a good explanation of what a pro-active CIA Station Chief (COS) of 1960 did to earn his keep. One can carry away a good deal of information about good `tradecraft', the use of non-official cover (NOC) agents, and the vital need for a close relationship between the COS and the U.S. Ambassador. For a long period Devlin was not only COS Kinshasa (Leopoldville), but also the only CIA representative in the Congo. As a result, he discloses quite a bit about the art and craft of recruiting and maintaining `agents' in the field. Although virtually all memoirs written by former intelligence folks tend to be somewhat self-serving, from this book it is clear that Devlin really was good at his job and did his best to protect the national security interests of U.S. and equally important to help the Congolese build a viable and independent nation state. That in the end the Congo continues to be a near failed state was due to factors well beyond Devlin's control.
The problem then as now of course is that a really good CIA operative like Devlin and a really poor operatives are treated pretty much the same way by CIA. The system is really designed to homogenize everyone into the same bland blend. Also it is clear that CIA of 2007 would never allow a COS the kind of freedom of action that Devlin had in 1960.
Anyone with an interest in Africa or the CIA or both ought to find this well written and informative book fascinating.
Book Description
Submarines had a vital, if often unheralded, role in the superpower navies during the Cold War. Their crews carried out intelligence-collection operations, sought out and stood ready to destroy opposing submarines, and, from the early 1960s, threatened missile attacks on their adversary’s homeland, providing in many respects the most survivable nuclear deterrent of the Cold War. For both East and West, the modern submarine originated in German U-boat designs obtained at the end of World War II. Although enjoying a similar technology base, by the 1990s the superpowers had created submarine fleets of radically different designs and capabilities. Written in collaboration with the former Soviet submarine design bureaus, Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore authoritatively demonstrate in this landmark study how differing submarine missions, antisubmarine priorities, levels of technical competence, and approaches to submarine design organizations and management caused the divergence.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent book.......2007-08-14
I sought a book with a serious overview of the topic of Cold War submarines, and not a book about one or another aspect of the topic. I ended up with a book that contains both an excellent overview as well as serious discussion of specific submarines, strategies, technologies and the men behind the scenes.
The story is well placed within the historical context of the political, military and economical events and processes of the Cold War. The text is well written and well structured.
Especially fascinating is the look behind the scenes of Soviet submarine design, construction and operations - those were among the best-kept secrets of the Soviet Union.
Besides dealing with "main stream" submarines, there are several interesting chapters about different experimental projects; rescue submarines and several fantasy projects, like freight vessels and aircraft carrying submarines.
Although the story is focused on the Cold War period, there is a detailed discussion of WWII technology that highly influenced Cold War designs, as well as descriptions of post Cold War vessels and fleets.
The book is well illustrated with photographs and line drawings.
Great book.......2007-03-16
Not as many actual pix of subs as most books but it is very well written and also dabbles into the politics and design that went on with each new design of submarine. Nice charts and missile specs and things like that. Goes into greater detail of the US boats more than Soviet.
Absolutely The Best.......2007-02-13
I was somewhat skeptical of this book when I saw nothing but 5 star reviews from purchasers of the title. However, having read it, this is THE Cold War submarine reference. It contains insights not only into the technologies deployed, but the rational (or in some cases the Irrational) that led to the development of the mysterious technological marvels we could only speculate on during the cold war. The authors clearly show both American and Soviet perspectives on the cold war submarine development. I found the information regarding the CONFORM design on 1967 to be of particular interest. Rickover's insistence on developing the 688 class killed CONFORM. Yet CONFORM was 40 years ahead of anything available at that time. It is interesting that the 688's were far more fragile than one might imagine. Yet Rickover insisted on having his way. Where would we be had the CONFORM design gone through?? This book is absolutely the best material that I have read to date on cold war submarines.
A very balanced overview.......2006-12-03
I knew about a Polmar from reading references in some papers, so I finally decided to give a try. I wasn't disappointed. There were lots of technical details giving an overview. Better yet, it is a balanced account - by no means are Americans portrayed as all powerful.
If there were two things it can be improved on - well, one would be the placement of the endnotes. It is a matter of taste, but considering how many there were and how interesting they were, it might have been more convenient to have put them at the bottom of the main text as footnotes for each page.
The second is that I would have killed for a chapter or two on "other than the equipment". Subs are not just their designers, their admirals and the technicals - it is also the men, their organization and their training. Polmar briefly goes over the differences, but it could have been given a full chapter or at least an Appendix if extra efficiency measures were applied to the pre-Cold War history stuff.
Now, I'm going to buy another Polmar book that would hopefully fill up the gap. Wish me luck.
Covers Much More than the Title indicates.......2006-03-10
I thoroughly agree with Mr. Dougherty's enthusiastic reader review. The authors have put together a virtual encyclopedia on modern sub design and construction with real insight into what the subs were intended to do, and how some politicians and bureaucrats sabotaged the projects. I found particularly illuminating how each side of the Soviet-US conflict used the records and existing prototypes of Nazi Germany's U-Boat experiments. Baker's line drawings and diagrams are quite helpful in visualizing the boats, as are the ample photos of the real subs and scale models. This is a book to which I will return again and again whenever there is some news item about
undersea naval competition.
Book Description
The “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in its drama, The Cold War stands as a triumphant summation of the era that, more than any other, shaped our own.
Customer Reviews:
History in Context.......2007-09-07
I found this book to be an extremely well organized survey of the Cold War. Professor Gaddis eloquently explains the sources of the conflict. He goes on to describe the escalation; and then points out how, somewhere in the middle, many of its actors came to view the conflict as permanent, and even desirable. He explains how it took men and women of vision to see the landscape of the future without the conflict as a permanent fixture, and then relentlessly pursue that vision.
The inclusion of the Soviet perspective from recently available sources makes this book especially interesting. The Soviets were pursuing global communism, which proved to be an unworkable solution to the ills of unbridled capitalism. But, we may never have had such crystal clear historical evidence of its unworkability if the Soviets hadn't undertaken their experiment.
Was the Cold War really dangerous?.......2007-07-17
The year Ronald Reagan died my mom commented to me, "What is all the fuss about Reagan? What did he ever do?" After I wiped the blood from my eyes, I asked her, "You don't speak Russian do you? If nothing else, you can thank him and men like him for that." People tend to forget what a formidable foe the USSR was and how close they came to winning the Cold War. Todays youth have even made the old Russian flag a fashion statement, wearing it on tee-shirts hoping to gain cool points from their hip socialist brainwashed friends. But the fact of the matter is that the Russian Empire was a threat. John Gaddis does an excellent job reminding us of this fact. Although the book is not an in depth study of the cold war, it is useful as a reminder to subsequent generations that the Communist threat was real, in American and throughout the rest of the world.
an excellent concise resource.......2007-06-30
Gaddis has done an excellent job of telling an extremely complicated history in a tight and well-written volume. The importance of his story is contrasted by his reminding the reader that his college students today have almost no living memory of the Cold War or just how serious a historical epic it was between two great powers.
As the world has changed dramatically over the past 16 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, this book will be an excellent resource to remember just what a huge struggle the Western bloc vs. the Soviet Union and its satellites was. This is not an ideaological book from the Yale professor Gaddis, but he gives credit to the end of the Cold War to three individuals and a people group: Ronald Reagan, Margeret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and the people of eastern Europe who contiually stood up to the Soviet and local communist leaders.
A weak point of this book, which admittedly does not have time to explore the vast and complicated expressions of every part of the Cold War is Gaddis explanation for why the anti-war movements of the 1960's and 70's in the West erupted with as much fury as they did, and subsided almost as quickly. His explanation, that it was largely caused by baby boom young adults, coming of age, with lots of time on their hands seems like a short answer. Comparing and contrasting the reaction of the West to the Korean War vs. Vietnam might have made a better use of the text.
Gaddis presentation of how the Cold War started at the end of World War II is another excellent section, especially how the West, making practical concessions to the Soviets that they could never hope to bargain for at the end of the war, quickly turned European opinion against the Soviets by forcing the Soviets into the position of being the ones who built wall, established border police and shut themselves off because they had to keep people in.
The explanation of proxy conflicts, especially in the Middle East, is another highlight of the work. Seeing the Israeli and Palestinian conflict as rump to the Cold War, and the Soviets inability to deal with their Egyptian allies in Nasser further showed the weakness of the Soviet state.
While ultimatley Gaddis presents the end of the Cold War as being led by the four main actors mentioned earlier, his treatment of Gorbachev as a man who managed the end of the failure of the Soviet Empire and the inability of the Soviets to have a sustainable economic future - the very reason for its existence is told with great clarity.
Gaddis warns throughout the book that choosing an ends justifying the means approach got the West into more dificulty than anything else. The attempt by the West, especially between John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, to manage a stable world delayed the inevitable end of the Cold War and more than likely created greater human misery of the likes the world has rarely scene. Ronald Reagan, and Thatcher and John Paul, were in a sense revolutionaries, for they sought to win the Cold War by calling for total peace and not half measures of agreements and stability.
Very Good, Concise History.......2007-05-21
This is ideal if you're not looking for an 14,000 page account of the Cold War...you get a little background on everything, from nuclear tests to Cuba to the fall of the USSR. What you don't get is much detail, which, I suppose, is the intent of a concise history; a little more detail would have been nice, though. It's a 260 page book, a few more facts or stories here and there probably wouldn't have pushed this into "only for historians" territory, it's hard to complain about the brevity of a book whose aim is brevity. 'The Company' by Robert Littel goes well with this, as it fleshes out many of the major events here in a far less dry manner than most Cold War history books. Anybody looking for an overview of one of the largest, longest, most epic events in modern history should pick this up.
Recounting the Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union.......2007-04-19
One of the great debates in American foreign policy is how do you deal with repressive regimes. There are several schools of thought on how to proceed. The first is isolation (this has been the U.S. policy towards Iran and N. Korea). The second is confrontation (Iraq is the obvious example) and the third is communication (this would be the tactic used by Nixon in China and the policy of détente with the Soviet Union). Each policy has its advocates and detractors and each its plusses and minuses. Embracing China has worked out fairly well for its citizenry although there is much room for improvement. On the other hand supporting the Saudi monarchy has caused some serious headaches for the U.S. and Saudi citizens. Isolation and sanctions have a very poor track record and generally makes repressed citizenry even worse off. Confrontation can have unpredictable results that often exasperate the situation. Military confrontation can lead to considerable misery and verbal confrontation generally fails because one of the maxims of maintaining a dictatorship is demonstrating strength. The Bush administrations threats towards Iran and North Korea have fallen flat.
The ethos of `do no harm' fails when deciding how to deal with stable but brutal dictatorships or failing regimes. I was watching Hotel Rwanda with my girlfriend when she asked why the United Nations hadn't done more to protect the Tutsis from genocide. But what could the U.N. do? Slaughter the Hutus? The Tutsis had blood on their own hands. In the case of Bosnia the U.N. and U.S. bombed the hell out of the Serbians but again the Albanians were no angels and had in fact sided with the Axis during WWII. While trying to arrest Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid 18 American soldiers died but so did an estimated 1,000 and 1,500 Somali militiamen with an upwards of 4,000 injured Somali. So when does a humanitarian mission become a slaughter?
In the case of the Soviet Union the people were clearly suffering under a crushingly repressive dictatorship. Despite its claim to being a system of the working man, Communism was an intellectual farce and an economic disaster. It was also a system bent on spreading its message and extending its influence. So the debate in the West was between confrontation and isolation. In the end a compromise of sorts was formed ending in confrontation through proxies. The author gave several examples of countries playing the two superpowers off one another. By not explicitly siding with one or the other smaller countries could manipulate for their own benefit or "wag the dog".
`The Cold War' by John Lewis Gaddis is rather brief for a subject spanning over 40 years of history. The author spends a considerable amount of time discussing the changing nature of war after the invention of the atomic bomb. We all owe a debt of gratitude to leaders on both sides of the iron curtain for showing the wisdom and restraint to not use these horrifying weapons. `The Cold War' chronicles the history of the Soviet Union from Stalin to Yeltzin. In the Soviet Union there was no position high enough that one could be free from danger of removal. There will always be a debate on whether containment was the best solution or whether it was Reagan's confrontation that was the final nail in the coffin. The author clearly favors the style Reagan and Thatcher and pretty much omits the sections on U.S. meddling in South America and the Middle East in the name of containment. Reagan's refusal to use the nonworking SDI as a bargaining chip seems silly in retrospect but it was on his watch that the Soviet Union collapsed and since the world wasn't irradiated I figure he must have done SOMETHING right.
Amazon.com
The thesis of this provocative and potentially important book is the increasing threat of violence arising from renewed conflicts between countries and cultures that base their traditions on religious faith and dogma. This argument moves past the notion of ethnicity to examine the growing influence of a handful of major cultures--Western, Eastern Orthodox, Latin American, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, and African--in current struggles across the globe. Samuel P. Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard University and foreign policy aide to President Clinton, argues that policymakers should be mindful of this development when they interfere in other nations' affairs.
Book Description
Based on the author's seminal article in Foreign Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is a provocative and prescient analysis of the state of world politics after the fall of communism. In this incisive work, the renowned political scientist explains how "civilizations" have replaced nations and ideologies as the driving force in global politics today and offers a brilliant analysis of the current climate and future possibilities of our world's volatile political culture.
Customer Reviews:
Pure hate... Author wants to blame everything to muslims.......2007-07-11
It scares me to find out that educated (so called intellectuals) are writing this type of hate infested books that are aimed at nothing but inflaming more hate and voilence in the world. Author has a stubborn belief that all muslim cultures have speriority complex and they are there to destroy the western influence. He needs to wake up and understand that every culture even western or african or latin is sustaining because there are good things there to fullfill the needs of the people along with bad things that represent historical events/influence, economic or social problems etc. Author completely ignores the fact that one (Malaysia) out of all muslim countries are run by our appointed dictators with the exception of Iran and Syria who are kept in isolation so they have no reason to praise us have any dialog going. I would suggest that the author should cosider psychotherepy and need to start reading outside of his shell.
A Classic?.......2007-05-18
As a retired agronomist with a strong science background I tend to check out references that are commonly used. This book is very often quoted, not always favorably. If you have recently, like I, become interested in world politics and especially Islam this is definitely one of the texts you should read. From my weak politics and history background I found Dr. Huntington making a lot of interesting observations. I found the book very intriguing and educational. I really enjoyed his take on the Bosnian War.
Helps you to understand current global affairs.......2007-05-16
This book helps you to understand current global affairs. Although one might not agree with some of the author's theories.
Although this book is from the Western perspective, the author does not glorify the western civilization and has shown respect for other civilizations.
Clash of Cultures and Politico-Religious Hegemony.......2007-05-11
Huntington provoked worldwide outrage by this book, both from conservative westerners who thought he was too "nice" about Muslim extremists, and from non-conservatives who believed him to be arrogant and ethnocentric. My opinion is that both are correct: there is a clash between those using religious identities to promote political agendas, and those attempting to keep religion at the personal level and politics at the macro level of society. This book infuriated many non-readers because of its apparent linking of Islam with political terrorism. Careful readers understood that this was merely reporting of what "experts" said, and not a personal attack by Huntington on faithful adherents to Islam. Below are a few of my favorite quotes:
--"This awakening is comprehensive--it is not just about individual piety; it is not just intellectual or cultural, nor is it just political. It is all of these, a comprehensive reconstruction of society from top to bottom."
--One study of militant leaders of Egyptian Islamist groups found they had five major characteristics, which appear to be typical of Islamists in other countries. They were young, overwhelmingly in their twenties and thirties. Eighty percent were university students or university graduates. Over half came from elite colleges or from the intellectually most demanding fields of technical specialization such as medicine or engineering. Over 70 percent were from lower middle-class, "modest, but not poor backgrounds," and were the first generation in their family to get higher education. They spent their childhoods in small towns or rural areas but had become residents of large cities. While students and intellectuals formed the militant cadres and shock troops of Islamist movements, urban middle-class people made up the bulk of the active membership. In some degree these came from what are often termed "traditional" middle class groups: merchants, traders, small business proprietors, bazaaris.
--Islamist activists "probably include a disproportionately large number of the best-educated and most intelligent young people in their respective populations," including doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, teachers, civil servants.
There is a clash today, and Huntington calls it rightly. There is violent conflict between those seeking political power through the power base of religious identities are opposed by those unwilling to give up values and ideals in their secular political system.
Already happening?.......2007-05-06
What exactly makes a 'civilization'? Why do tribal conflicts in Africa not spread too far outward? Why did the conflict in Yugoslavia prompt Orthodox Russia to support the Serbs, and Muslim Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Islamic states to support the Bosnians? Why couldn't the civil war in Lebanon be solved by dialogue? Why are Islam's borders so bloody? Even though Saddam Hussein was a vicious tyrant and killed many of his own fellow Muslims, why did so many in the Islamic world proclaim him a hero when the United States invaded Iraq? Will demographic decline in the West change the balance of economic and military power in the world? Is the West in severe decline and can it turn itself around?
If there is any book that can fit into the context of today's global political sphere and shed light on the questions above, it is this book. The book defines what a civilization consists of, and why some are incompatible with each other. World demographics are depicted and used to make predictions about the future balance of world powers. The buildup of non-Western armed forces is highlighted and used to show how the West could lose its military dominance, and what will the future hold with such a change in power. Will it be multiculturalism and tolerance, or will it end up being a giant Lebanon or Yugoslavia, and how could we prevent such a disaster if it were to occur?
Regardless of your political position on the book, I must say it is by far the most comprehensive one I have come across on this subject. Accurately and extensively researched and documented, this outstanding book may be the most important one explaining the conflicts of the 21st century.
Book Description
This breakthrough book provides a detailed reconstruction of Stalin’s leadership from the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 to his death in 1953. Making use of a wealth of new material from Russian archives, Geoffrey Roberts challenges a long list of standard perceptions of Stalin: his qualities as a leader; his relationships with his own generals and with other great world leaders; his foreign policy; and his role in instigating the Cold War. While frankly exploring the full extent of Stalin’s brutalities and their impact on the Soviet people, Roberts also uncovers evidence leading to the stunning conclusion that Stalin was both the greatest military leader of the twentieth century and a remarkable politician who sought to avoid the Cold War and establish a long-term detente with the capitalist world.
By means of an integrated military, political, and diplomatic narrative, the author draws a sustained and compelling personal portrait of the Soviet leader. The resulting picture is fascinating and contradictory, and it will inevitably change the way we understand Stalin and his place in history. Roberts depicts a despot who helped save the world for democracy, a personal charmer who disciplined mercilessly, a utopian ideologue who could be a practical realist, and a warlord who undertook the role of architect of post-war peace.
Customer Reviews:
Warm and fuzzy Uncle Joe.......2007-09-12
Mr. Podmore has it all wrong. He makes it seem that the West started the cold war- PLEASE!
The U.S. knew what Soviet "liberation" was all about and wanted Western Europe not to fall under the yolk of nightmarish communism. If you really understood what the "benevolent" Red Army and NKVD butchers did to Poland and the Baltic states 1939/40 and at the end of the war (not to mention the rest of Eastern Europe -mass arrests, mass deportations, death by bullet or labor), then you'd probably have a different opinion of ole Uncle Joe.
A REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT.......2007-06-19
Little by little we learn more about the war in the East in WWII. Until the Russians opened their archives to Western historians, most of the events were described through the eyes of German generals who had their own axes to grind. This remarkable volume by an Irish scholar attempts to see the victory through the mind of Stalin. If there are any diaries or other personal memoirs by Stalin, they are still closed to the West. What the author gives us is Stalin's thinking through examination of his daily calender, review of what he said to his colleagues and others such as ambassadors, etc as they reported it, and an analysis of his messages and letters.
He also introduces another aspect of the early defeat of the Soviet forces. He states the Soviet thinking was confined to offense, and it was unprepared to take on major defense as a strategy in the initial stages. There is support for this analysis in Fugate & Dovoretsky's volume, Thunder on the Dnepr. They mention a top secret war game (the third) whose documentation is still closed to the West which gave the Soviets confidence they could defeat the Germans through defense in depth.
Despite his claims, Mannstein was not the originator of the tactical implementation of this strategy.
Citino's book, the German Way of War, reinforces the knowledge that the superiority of German general officers lay in their unquestioned competence in operational matters. Their great wealmess was the inability to grasp the strategic implications of their operations. Here, the author points out was one of Stalin's great strengths. Even in 1943, before the great battle of Kursk, he was already thinking about post war implications.
Perrett' book, Knights of the Black Cross, describes how the Germans stripped a regiment out of each panzer division to build enough divisions for the attack on Russia. It built a fundamental weakness into the plan. Now we have Tooze's new book describing, among other things, the inherent industrial weakness of Germany fortelling the ultimate failure of the attack. Thomas Childer's Teaching Company lectures, WWII: A Military and Social History, describes how the German infantry officers encountered a different war than the panzer divisions. Overcoming Russian resistance in the encirlced forces was far more difficult than contemplated.
Roberts doesn't blink at the odious consequences of Stalin's torment of the Soviet people, nor does he attempt to coat over it. It's not the purpose of his volume to go over ground that is well-known. He gives the reader insight into how the man managed the Soviet victory. He joins in creating a useable picture for students of WWII of what the man was like in conducting his affairs. His discussion of Stalin's remarkable intelligence supports the narration in Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy. Stalin's grasp of Russian history, his understanding of his armed forces and the thrust of how to conduct the war are awesome. The author points out Stalin's mistakes as well as his success. Regardless of the other sides of the man, as one reviewer emphasized, his place in this area of WWII history continues to grow.
I recommend this volume to any serious student of WWII as well as those curious about how Stalin operated on a day-to-day basis during this slice of his life. The Cold War Years portion of the book were not as interesting to me. Perhaps that era needs more time for history to digest it as well as there may be more archival releases on both sides to give us a balanced view.
This volume belongs in any library that claims to have a military history section as well as the libraries of those who wish to have a better understanding of the events of WWII or how Soviet leadership operated. It will be an important reference work for many years to come.
Stalin was Stalin, Still .......2007-03-26
This treatise comes as close as I ever want to see to an apology for its cruel and vicious subject. The author claims he wants to balance the view we have of Stalin, but "balance" is not to be found here.
If Stalin was a good wartime and political leader, then what does that make Churchill or FDR?
This book is not worth reading.
Brilliant study of the Second World War and the Cold War.......2007-03-21
This book is a very useful corrective to myths about the Second World War and the Cold War. It shows how the Soviet Union played a key role in winning the World War, defeating more than 75% of Hitler's divisions. As President Roosevelt said, "The Russian armies are killing more Axis personnel and destroying more Axis material than all the other twenty-five United Nations put together."
Roberts concludes, "Stalin was a very effective and highly successful war leader ... [who] was indispensable to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany." Churchill continually promised to help the Soviet war effort. For example, in August 1942, he told Stalin that by spring 1943 a million British and US troops would have opened a second front in Western Europe. But Churchill delayed the second front until June 1944.
Roberts argues, "Stalin worked hard to make the Grand Alliance a success and wanted to see it continue after the war." The postwar Attlee government, on the other hand, worked hard to break up the Alliance, being more concerned to save the Empire than to keep the peace. Stalin said the Labour government was more conservative than the Conservatives in their defence of the British ruling class's imperial interests.
In 1947, President Truman adopted Labour's hostility to the Soviet Union and peaceful coexistence and launched the Marshall Plan. "For Stalin the Marshall Plan was the breaking point in postwar relations with the United States." The Plan put Western European countries under US control, enabling the US state to interfere in their internal affairs. It led straight to the formation of the anti-Soviet Western bloc, which started the Cold War and split the world into two camps.
Stalin's policy of peaceful coexistence did not mean accepting whatever the imperialists did. Two years after US forces intervened in Korea, he said, "One must be firm when dealing with America ... It's been already two years. And the USA has still not subdued little Korea. ... They want to subjugate the whole world, yet they cannot subdue little Korea."
Moving toward a better understanding of Stalin.......2007-01-19
This is one of the few books that takes a more objective view of Stalin. Taken is the fact that the man was responsible for many deaths throughout his tenure as leader of the Soviet Union. But at the same time it is presented that there was much more to him than simply being labeled a 'killer.' Starting from the beginning of the Second World War the reader is presented with the activities within the Soviet Union to first avert the war, that is make an alliance with England and France against Germany, and then to create the best possible position for the USSR to be in, that is to make a pact with Nazi Germany. Some might think this a betrayal of some sort but the fact remains that Stalin and the USSR were the first to propose an alliance against Hitler, when the Munich conference went through without Stalin even being invited this in essence showed what the west thought of him. Up until 1941 the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had trade relations from which both benefited and Stalin was trying his best to avert war even when told that it was imminent. While he made mistakes in this instance it is also true that he authorized troop movements, the calling up of reserves, etc that were meant to help the Red Army combat any enemy activity. Sadly, this proved to have been unable to stem the tide of the German advance into the Soviet Union. Throughout the beginning period of war, that is up until the battle of Stalingrad, Stalin was responsible for some of the mistakes which cost the Red Army hundreds of thousands of casualties. But it should be kept in mind that Stalin never took a decision on his own. There were also those that choose to side with a certain action and those who wanted to go against it, at times Stalin would choose the worse action but he was never a sole figure advocating for it. While this doesn't excuse him it sheds light on the fact that he was not the only one making mistakes at this point in time. Eventually he would relegate more control to his generals and Marshals with the outcome being greater and better organized operations like Uranus, Bagration, etc. While the military takes up a large chunk of the book it should also be noted that this is also a political history. Mainly looking at the activities of Stalin and his wartime allies, the US and England. Various meetings were held throughout the war; Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam which made arrangements for what relations would be like after the war was over. The Polish question was on everyone's mind as well as the question of what would happen to Germany and of course the USSR and her entry into the war against Japan was always a main point for Roosevelt. One of the interesting aspects of this book are the ideas behind Stalin's insistence that Eastern Europe should be a Soviet sphere of influence. What's interesting is that when asked to leave Greece to England, he agreed. He took little interest in the developments in Norway, Holland, and a number of other territories freed by the western allies and established once more as independent states and within the US and England's sphere of influence. Yet when it came to Poland or Hungary and Bulgaria there were the allies having to voice their opinions about what should be going on there. Stalin's thinking was that it took Germany 20 years to get into another war, it could take another 20 for WWIII to begin so why shouldn't the USSR do the most to protect itself? These Eastern European states would become the buffer zone for her to protect her from future German aggression, especially since Germany wasn't going to be broken up as he had proposed again and again. Of course I am only presenting details from here and there in the book, there is much more useful information to be found in this work about Stalin's thinking and actions and how they fit into the grand scheme of things. Many archival sources are used which adds a lot of interesting information as well as recent works on the Soviet Union which can't be tainted, as is sometimes done by some, as 'propaganda.' In my opinion an excellent addition to literature on this time period and especially on Stalin.
Amazon.com
Edwards traces how computers have emerged as the dominant technology as a direct result of Cold War politics and the defense research it engendered. From the first use of room-size mainframes to coordinate missile systems, Pentagon research aimed toward complete computer control, including the budget-busting and ultimately impractical Strategic Defensive Initiative. Edwards relates how the technolog--which is now so open as to be nearly anarchic--began in strictly enclosed secrecy. The military computer goal of perfect "command, control and communication" systems was understood to mean communication only within a very closed world. Edwards' thesis is that this approach influenced the very structure of our modern computers.
Book Description
The Closed World offers a radically new alternative to the canonical histories of computers and cognitive science. Integrating political, cultural, and technological history, it argues that we can make sense of computers as tools only when we simultaneously grasp their roles as metaphors and political icons.
In this extended exploration of the relations of science and engineering to the evolution of modern society, Paul Edwards argues that what people have said, thought, and experienced through computers--as reflections of the nature of their minds; as solutions to political, commercial, and military problems; as icons of rationality--is as significant as anything computers have actually accomplished. Social and cultural context has shaped the growth of computer technology as much as it has been shaped by it.
Customer Reviews:
Missing the point?.......2000-10-16
While this is an excellent and sensitive overview of the history of computer science from a critical standpoint, it may miss the essential point.
This is that while the announced intention of Cold War data systems efforts was to indeed provide a logically closed structure that would ensure national security and a narrow form of economic growth (which excluded unions from power), as Edwards himself reveals, these systems in significant ways failed to accomplish their technical goals.
The problem is that people with the traditional liberal suspicion of computers miss either this fact or fail to grasp its significance. Edwards fails to grasp its significance.
What it means is that on the ground, in the apparently highly controlled mainframe computer rooms, a highly "open" and possibly even "green" for of chaos operated as software (in one noted example) bayed at the moon when it mistook the moon for a missile. This chaos was presented as its opposite in a rhetorical trick which conceals the labor, and in some cases the very existence, of software creation.
The troubling fact, invisible to humanists outside the field, is that the upper-level administrators of these systems did not really care that they did not work, as long as the public viewed them as a closed and working system. They'd also prefer to conceal the origins of the software that controls these systems in labor and in writing.
Edwards in the main fails to link this rhetorical sleight-of-hand to C. Wright Mills' work in which the general public is systematically deceived, and a white-collar class creates the tools of its own destruction.
The Sage air defense system did not work and did not, in fact, protect the United States from attack: what protected us from attack was the decision of men to back down from macho and nuclear-armed confrontation, including Eisenhower's decision to not back Britain, France and Israel in 1956's Suez crisis and Nikita Krushchev's decision to back down in 1962 over Cuba.
The real technical illusion is not that the closed world is "better than" the green world. It is to not fully close digital worlds but to present them as closed, and to prevent the rules of their closure from public oversight, and control.
Book Description
In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after the United States' segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of U.S. allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each lynching harmed foreign relations, and "the Negro problem" became a central issue in every administration from Truman to Johnson.
In what may be the best analysis of how international relations affected any domestic issue, Mary Dudziak interprets postwar civil rights as a Cold War feature. She argues that the Cold War helped facilitate key social reforms, including desegregation. Civil rights activists gained tremendous advantage as the government sought to polish its international image. But improving the nation's reputation did not always require real change. This focus on image rather than substance--combined with constraints on McCarthy-era political activism and the triumph of law-and-order rhetoric--limited the nature and extent of progress.
Archival information, much of it newly available, supports Dudziak's argument that civil rights was Cold War policy. But the story is also one of people: an African-American veteran of World War II lynched in Georgia; an attorney general flooded by civil rights petitions from abroad; the teenagers who desegregated Little Rock's Central High; African diplomats denied restaurant service; black artists living in Europe and supporting the civil rights movement from overseas; conservative politicians viewing desegregation as a communist plot; and civil rights leaders who saw their struggle eclipsed by Vietnam.
Never before has any scholar so directly connected civil rights and the Cold War. Contributing mightily to our understanding of both, Dudziak advances--in clear and lively prose--a new wave of scholarship that corrects isolationist tendencies in American history by applying an international perspective to domestic affairs.
Customer Reviews:
An enlightening book on public diplomacy .......2007-01-11
If you think Las Vegas tourist ads and "listening tours" are components of public diplomacy and international relations, you need to read this book. If you think media coverage is intense now, you need to read this book. Dudziak gets into the reality and impact of media coverage forty years ago and its impact on the global information war of the time that is remarkably similar to today: "Following World War II, anything that undermined the image of American democracy was seen as threatening world peace and aiding Soviet aspiration to dominate the world... Nations were divided between a way of life 'distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression' and a way of life that "relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms."
Dudziak looks at the impact of race and the civil rights movement in the United States on American public diplomacy and foreign policy. The impact of America's "color bar" on foreign relations is astonishing and Dudziak helps contextualize the movement and government responses within contemporary pressures.
Indiscriminate actions against foreign and American dignitaries reinforced the accessibility of race-based norms to all and played into Soviet propaganda and provided a painful counternarrative that impacted US foreign relations. The US Ambassador, Chester Bowles, to India, speaking in 1952 at Yale University said, "A year, a month, or even a week in Asia is enough to convince any perceptive American that the colored peoples of Asia and Africa, who total two-thirds of the world's population, seldom think about the United States without considering the limitations under which our 13 million Negroes are living."
As we attempted to project democracy and its emphasis on equality and freedom, in opposition to Soviet tyranny, discrimination in the US was well known beyond our borders. Dudziak presents "With Us or Against Us" examples with Louis Armstrong and Josephine Baker as examples, among others. In the case of Baker, State Department officers justified censorship and hardship imposed on Baker by discounting her personal beliefs. Her "derogatory" remarks "concerning racial discrimination in the United States" were deemed to be "presenting a distorted and malicious picture of actual conditions." If we do not practice democracy, how well will our promotion of it be received? This was a real question of the time that other history books ignore and was the very question Ambassador Bowles asked.
As Dudziak wrote, "Domestic difficulties were managed by US presidents with an eye toward how their actions would play overseas." Disingenuous or factually misleading statements to justify domestic policies and opinions are not the mainstay of any single generation. While not intending to be destructive to the nation, these policies have a severely detrimental affect on domestic cohesion and leadership within the foreign relations. Dudziak implies the race issue in the international press was the seed of negative views of the US. The golden temple of American democracy was seen as something falling short, even hypocritical. Locksley Edmunson, writing in 1973, could be speaking of today with our Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and alleged secret CIA prisons when he wrote, "Those states best technically equipped to maintain world order are not necessarily the ones whose credentials recommend them as the most appropriate guardians of a global conscience."
You can read different things out of Mary Dudziak's book. As a student of public diplomacy, my take-away centered on the impact on foreign policy, which the author does a good job investigating. The take-away? Practice what you preach, or at least be effective in making them think you're trying to.
Causes and Effects.......2001-06-05
Upon first consideration one would think that the reciprocal influences of the Cold War and American civil rights activity would be self-evident. Perhaps, but Dudziak's book is full of surprises and details how galling the "American Dilemma" was to U.S. foreign policy-makers and various presidents and how each responded to the concerns of African, Asian, American, and European countries regarding the United States civil rights struggle over several decades. Why was civil rights legislation important to American foreign policy? How was Eisenhower's response to school desegregation in Little Rock influenced by foreign perceptions? How did the international attention to civil rights activity affect John Kennedy's domestic policies? Why was the State Department so concerned about Asian and African criticisms of the United States' record on civil rights? How was the Civil Rights Act of 1965 viewed by the international community? How did the views of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X affect United States foreign policy efforts? Was the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to an American activist also an international signal that worried a president and the State Department? These questions and many more are answered by Dudziak.
Dudziak deserves recognition and commendations for clearly demonstrating that the United States civil rights movement had a global as well as a national impact on America's foreign policy efforts and placed the United States squarely between the demands of a persecuted domestic minority and the scrutiny of the nations to which it declared itself the leader of human rights, liberty, and freedom in contrast to the totalitarian regimes of communist countries.
This book is well worth reading and an important addition to the growing number of books on the history of race relations that was not, and is not,taught in school. Kudos to Dudziak for an important job well done.
Eye Opening and Important -- A Great Read!.......2001-01-11
Mary Dudziak revisits a familiar chapter in American history--the civil rights movement--but provides readers with a completely new perspective on it.
We know about the work that was being done in the streets. But now Dudziak helps us see the movement through the eyes of America's cold war policymakers. For them, civil rights was a foreign policy problem, and Dudziak helps us see how this explains many of the movements successes and (maybe more important) many of its defeats.
Essential reading for everyone interested in American history, civil rights, constitutional law (yes, even Brown v. Board of Education must be seen in light of this analysis), and foreign policy.
Excellent!.......2001-01-08
This book is fabulous. Clear and articulate, it reads like a story and explores an aspect of the civil rights movement most authors and historians have neglected. It is meticulously researched and filled with information from sources ranging from presidential telephone conversations to news wires to official publications. The civil rights movement cannot be fully understood without reflecting upon the information contained in this book.
Book Description
The Cold War contains a selection of official and unofficial documents which provide a truly multi-faceted account of the entire Cold War era. This volume presents the different kinds of materials necessary to understand what the Cold War was about, how it was fought, and the ways in which it affected the lives of people around the globe. By depicting the experiences of East Berlin housewives and South African students, as well as those of political leaders from Europe and the Third World, The Cold War emphasizes the variety of ways in which the Cold War conflict was experienced. The significance of these differences is essential to understanding the Cold War: it demonstrates how the causes of the clash may have looked very different in Santiago from the way they looked in Seoul, New York, Moscow, or Beijing. The book examines the entirety of the Cold War era, presenting documents from the end of World War II right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A final selection of source material goes on to illustrate the impact of the Cold War to the present day. Again, the emphasis is global: there are documents on the aftermath of the Cold War in Africa and Europe, as well as on the links between the Cold War and the dramatic events of 11 September 2001. By providing a truly international glimpse of the Cold War and its various actors and subjects, The Cold War helps cut through the often simplistic notions of the recent past and allows the reader to explore the truly global impact of the East-West confrontation that dominated international relations in the second half of the twentieth century.
Book Description
"Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?" As if in answer to this poignant question from John Updike's Rabbit at Rest, Stephen Whitfield examines the impact of the Cold War--and its dramatic ending--on American culture in an updated version of his highly acclaimed study. In a new epilogue to this second edition, he extends his analysis from the McCarthyism of the 1950s, including its effects on the American and European intelligensia, to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and beyond.
Whitfield treats his subject matter with the eye of a historian, reminding the reader that the Cold War is now a thing of the past. His treatment underscores the importance of the Cold War to our national identity and forces the reader to ask, Where do we go from here? The question is especially crucial for the Cold War historian, Whitfield argues. His new epilogue is partly a guide for new historians to tackle the complexities of Cold War studies.
Customer Reviews:
Solid overview of US cultural history from 1946-1962.......2004-06-11
Whitfield's book serves as a succinct overview of American Cold War culture, which he defines as ending in the early 1960s (a questionable decision but one made by many scholars who employ the "Cold War Culture" rubric).
What sets apart this book from other entries in the literature is Whitfield's recognition of the importance of religion to Cold War America and his willingness to grapple with the Cold War's full range of moral implications (an element lacking in most academic studies of the domestic side of the Cold War, which tend to fixate endlessly on McCarthy, who is used to tar and discredit all variants of American anti-Communism). This is not to suggest that Whitfield is an apologist for McCarthy, not at all, but to commend Whitfield for understanding that, to paraphrase Arthur Koestler, the Cold War was the story of the United States fighting for a half-truth against a total lie.
Culture of Cold War -- Whitfield.......2001-07-14
Whitfield's book is extremely informative. The connections he makes are fascinating. The book made me want to go out to the library and Blockbuster and look at the popular books and movies he talks about for a second time in a fresh light.
Intelectually Challenging.......2001-02-17
This was rated a "3" by me because it was a little redundant as well as choppy. The book was great in the sense of intelecutal reading but lacked the story like atmosphere. I wouldn't recommend this book to be read for enjoyment, but it would be great if it were used as research on a paper. The chapters are broken up into sections 1,2,3,..etc, so once you have read one section the rest are really just other examples of what the author is trying to get across, easy to skim through for good facts and info. Good Luck!
Book Description
This book is a perfect example of how today's liberals have completely rewritten history to cover up their own role on the wrong side of the Cold War.
Customer Reviews:
Refreshing: But Not Surprising........2007-07-16
The author writes crisply without the vitriol of Ann Coulter. The avowed purpose of the book is to serve as an eternal reminder of the malignant gullibility of the American left{as in the blame the USA first crowd}, in dealing with world communism. It is worth the price just for all the verifiable quotes from a huge array of kooks. From Chris Dodd stating that Reagan was going against the tide of history, to the inane Ted Turner fawning over Gorbachev, to William Coffin's claiming that having nuclear weapons is innately sinful. The author also refutes the left's claim that they helped win the "cold war." She shows in detail that they opposed most tactics & strategies used by the free west to win. The only flaws in the book are that it should have come out earlier, & could have been twice as long.
Idiots Then Idiots Now.......2007-06-23
Lenin is generally credited with saying that world communism has been aided by well-meaning but gullible useful idiots, most of whom he saw as western leftists who even back in the 1920s saw a kinship with communism. Not much has changed since then and in USEFUL IDIOTS, Mona Charen takes the entire liberal left to task for its decades long adherence to a philosophy that has brought ruin and genocide to millions but still exists in our universities even when it no longer does so in the Soviet state that spawned it. Despite the book's sales blurbs that suggest that leading Hollywood celebrities like Harry Belafonte and Susan Sarandon and MoveOn.Org politicians like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore are directly responsible for the all-pervasive tsunami of secular progressivism, these and others of a similar ilk get remarkably little ink. They emerge more as symbols of rather than originators of the useful idiots syndrome. Most of Charen's animus is directed toward the full spectrum of a liberalism that emerged from the 60s and the fallout from the Vietnam war that galvanized the left into seeing the United States not only as the source of imperialistic excesses but also of all the world's assorted ills. Her most telling chapters detail how "America's role in Vietnam set the tone for every Cold War debate that would follow for the next thirty-five years." (Page 28) Charen notes that while leftist fascination with America as intrinsically evil had existed even early enough for Lenin to offer his (sorry for the pun) left-handed compliment of useful idiots, "in the mid-1960s, leftist anti-Americanism went mainstream." (Page 29)
The bulk of Charen's book deals with liberalism in the aggregate. She notes how post 60s liberals saw Communism through the lens of a half-hearted sympathetic patina that somehow managed to excuse every Communist bloodbath while failing to excuse what it saw as a genocidal equivalent from the United States, even when it was clear that this equivalent existed more in the minds of the left than in the minds of the victims. The deaths of millions due to Stalin's forced collectivization is not only portrayed by the liberals as either non-existent or grossly exaggerated but even if it did happen, the United States was somehow at fault. This then is the core thesis of the left. Evil exists in this world, but where it has been identified, it originates in the capitalistic excesses of America. Mona Charen in USEFUL IDIOTS tells in compelling detail that idiots go through life with self-imposed blinders, the result of which is destructive to those who even now look to the left for help and guidance.
Freudian Title.......2006-12-25
The title of this book inadvertently refers to the author herself. This book is "useful" to the extent that it serves the persistent neo-con tactic of preventing any honest criticism of US foreign policy by hauling out vacuous phrases like "blame America first" or "conspiracy theory" or "moral equivalence" or like nonsense from the Reagan/Kirkpatrick crowd. Skip this book. Notice the 100 or so used copies on sale starting at 1 cent? It's pap.
useful misdirection.......2006-11-19
Ms.Charen bandies about misdirecting terms like "Statist", "Atheist", and "Believers" to frame the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in terms that do not exist.
The United States is no less a State than the Soviet Union was. We owe our victory over the Soviet Union to our performance as a state. We owe it the industrial strength and prosperity we built up under geographic and economic (relative)isolation. We owe it to the high Progressive Income taxes of FDR, Harry Truman, Ike Eisenhower, Kennedy, and even Richard Nixon.
Not even the Reagan Tax cuts for the rich, raising of social security taxes for the poor and lower middle class, embracing of globalism, and general mindlessness could stop the United States from outlasting the Soviet Union in the global endurance race.
Our European allies in the cold war, Canada, and nearly every other developed nation comparable in prosperity is certainly a State that conservatives would consider socialistic.
America under Globalism, unrestricted free trade, and Reaganomic/Greenspanomics can look forward to more of the same: massive deficits, resource wars, debt, and expanding rotting urban cores.
We've outdone every other developed nation in turning most of our cities into expanding rotting urban cores. In exchange we get the addiction to oil. I can't imagine a corporation engaging in the warfare and nationbuilding necessary to keep the oil imports coming. Nope, it requires a massive state undertaking. Especially that thanks to Globalism, India and China technically have far more to trade for that oil than we do. Basically, we can trade wheat for oil. How many farmers do you know make decent incomes?
Useful Idiots is a great book for those who trying to Misdirect, lie, or are just plain stupid.
Think about this.......2006-11-12
Please. Please give liberals all your arrogant "pity" and contempt. We just swept the House and Senate and made your simpering chimp president a lame duck. We don't hate America or blame it first. We blame cynical republican profiteers, who devise simplistic useless policy and foist it onto an electorate without the awareness to know they're being manipulated. And you'll continue to lose as long as your a bunch of hypocritical moralists, who text-message teen boys from the Senate, rip off Indian tribes over casinos, beat thir wives, pay off their mistresses, offer to save your soul while smoking crystal meth, and stuff deerheads into peoples mailboxes etc. Good Luck coming back from the abyss, losers. Screeds like this aren't going to help. America has wised up to your lame tricks.
Books:
- Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
- DAISY COOKS!: LATIN FLAVORS THAT WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD
- Dancing in the Shadows of the Moon
- Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
- Deltora Quest (Special Edition) Books 1-4 (Deltora Quest, books 1 through 4 (The Forest of Silence, The Lake of Tears, City of Rats, The Shifting Sands))
- Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework (The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series)
- Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty : The Only Networking Book You'll Ever Need
- Double or Nothing
- Downriver
- Dynamic Trading: Dynamic Concepts in Time, Price & Pattern Analysis With Practical Strategies for Traders & Investors
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Forever
- The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero
- Some Prefer Nettles
- Should You Leave
- Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies
- The Magic School Bus Inside The Earth
- The Natural History of Madagascar
- Rainforests: An Activity Guide for Ages 6-9
- Reina Noor: Memorias
- Markets in Mexico: Location & Logistics, Fourth Edition
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil
Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games
In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo
Flawed Patriot: The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
