Book : Wild Bill Donovan The Spymaster Who Created The Oss..

-Titulo Original : Wild Bill Donovan The Spymaster Who Created The Oss And Modern American Espionage

-Fabricante :

Free Press

-Descripcion Original:

“Entertaining history…Donovan was a combination of bold innovator and imprudent rule bender, which made him not only a remarkable wartime leader but also an extraordinary figure in American history” (The New York Times Book Review).He was one of America’s most exciting and secretive generals-the man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, “Wild Bill” Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the country’s first national intelligence agency) and the father of today’s CIA. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before. Now, veteran journalist Douglas Waller has mined government and private archives throughout the United States and England, drawn on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and interviewed scores of Donovan’s relatives, friends, and associates to produce a riveting biography of one of the most powerful men in modern espionage. Wild Bill Donovan reads like an action-packed spy thriller, with stories of daring young men and women in the OSS sneaking behind enemy lines for sabotage, breaking into Washington embassies to steal secrets, plotting to topple Adolf Hitler, and suffering brutal torture or death when they were captured by the Gestapo. It is also a tale of political intrigue, of infighting at the highest levels of government, of powerful men pitted against one another. Separating fact from fiction, Waller investigates the successes and the occasional spectacular failures of Donovan’s intelligence career. It makes for a gripping and revealing portrait of this most controversial spymaster. Review Wild Bill Donovan, the founding father of American espionage, jumps off the page in Douglas Wallers superb biography of one of the nations most important and least understood leaders of the 20th Century. Waller marvelously evokes an era when a matinee-idol character like Donovan could turn Washington into his own secret playground even as he ended Americas naivete about the necessity of stealing the secrets of other gentlemen. Waller takes us back to a time, long before bureaucratic sclerosis set in at the Central Intelligence Agency, when American spies lived in technicolor. -- James Risen, author of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush AdministrationWild Bill Donovan, the founding father of American espionage, jumps off the page in Douglas Wallers superb biography of one of the nations most important and least understood leaders of the 20th Century. Waller marvelously evokes an era when a matinee-idol character like Donovan could turn Washington into his own secret playground even as he ended Americas naivete about the necessity of stealing the secrets of other gentlemen. Waller takes us back to a time, long before bureaucratic sclerosis set in at the Central Intelligence Agency, when American spies lived in technicolor. -- James Risen, author of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush AdministrationAn extraordinary portrait of an extraordinary figure in 20th century American history, a man beyond the power of fiction to invent. Wild Bill Donovan is brilliantly researched and beautifully told, as evocative and enlightening as it is entertaining. --Rick Atkinson, author of An Army at Dawn and The Day of BattleContemporary history is seldom as relevant and engaging as Douglas Wallers new biography, Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage, which is -- by turns -- fascinatingly instructive and thoroughly entertaining. --L.A. TimesDouglas Waller gives us the definitive portrait of the fascinating, creative, disorganized, brave man who--starting from nothing during our biggest war--created our modern capacity for human intelligence and covert operations. A must for all who would understand American intelligence. --R. Jam