The Very Best Men - Four Who Dared : The Early Days of the CIA

New York: Simon & Schuster. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. 1995. First Edition. Hardcover. Autograph; 427 pages; Clean and secure in original binding in very nice dustjacket; one marginal mark in the foreword. Inscribed on halftitle "To Kay & Rowlie / who understand the world / with warm regards / Evan Thomas / Oct 1995" With a manuscript note on Newsweek letterhead "Dear Kay & Rowlie / Here is my old spooks / book. It was fun to do - / I hope it's fun to read. / Best, / Evan" Tells the story of the CIA from the end of World War II to Vietnam through the careers of four extraordinary men who ran covert operations and whose fall from favor had enormous consequences for Cold War policy. This excellent addition to material on the early years of the CIA covers the heyday of the Cold War, from the middle 1940s to the middle 1960s. The book focuses on the careers of four operatives: Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and Desmond FitzGerald, all of whom helped guide the covert actions and growth of the CIA. Bissell was best known owing to his involvement in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but Wisner, as the early director of covert operations, was the key figure in the agency's early history. All four appear to have been more interested in the big operation, which could go spectacularly wrong, than in the slow process of intelligence gathering. Much of this same material is covered in Burton Hersh's more critical The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA. The author, a managing editor at Newsweek, also co-wrote The Wise Men, which was similar in approach. Recommended for espionage collections of public and academic libraries; Signed by Author .