Legacy of Ashes is a detailed history of the Central Intelligence Agency from its creation after World War II, through the Cold War years and the War on Terror, to the September 11 attacks in 2001 and beyond. The book is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence
“Impressively reported, immensely entertaining.”
“Truly extrodinary. The best book ever written on a case of espionage.”
“Is the CIA a bulwark of freedom against dangerous foes, or a malevolent conspiracy to spread American imperlalism? A little of both, according to this absorbing study.”
“The most notoius muckraking CIA books of the 1970s aspired to shatter the agency and make sure Americans never tried to create one again. Mr. Weiner’s goals is just the opposite. He hopes that his book will ‘serve as a warning’, insisting that “thisnation may not long endure as a great power unless it finds the eyes to see things asthey are in the world.”
Tim Weiner is a reporter, author of three books and co-author of a fourth, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. He is a graduate of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and has worked for the Times since 1993, as a foreign correspondent in Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan and as a national security correspondent in Washington, DC.
