The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

by Kinzer, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9781250053121
• ISBN10: 1250053129
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-10-07
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Summary

A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today's world

During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.

John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?

The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies--many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country's role in the world.
Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran.
The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013

Author Biography

Stephen Kinzer is the author of Reset, Overthrow, All the Shah's Men, and numerous other books. An award-winning foreign correspondent, he served as the New York Times's bureau chief in Turkey, Germany, and Nicaragua and as the Boston Globe's Latin America correspondent. He is a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, contributes to The New York Review of Books, and writes a column on world affairs for The Guardian. He lives in Boston.

Table of Contents

Introduction      1

PART I: TWO BROTHERS
      1. Unmentionable Happenings      7
      2. The Taint of My Environment      37
      3. Dull, Duller, Dulles      63
      4. That Fella from Wall Street      86

PART II: SIX MONSTERS
      5. A Whirling Dervish with a College Education      119
      6. The Most Forthright Pro-Communist      147
      7. A Matchless Interplay of Ruthlessness and Guile      175
      8. The Self-Intoxicated President      216
      9. The Tall, Goateed Radical      247
      10. The Bearded Strongman      284

PART III: ONE CENTURY
      11. A Face of God      311

Notes      329
Bibliography      368
Acknowledgments      383
Index      385