Brothers (Kinzer) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book. The Brothers is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of "inconvenient" regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world…In his detailed, well-constructed and highly readable book, Stephen Kinzer…shows how the brothers drove America's interventionist foreign policy.
Adam LeBor - New York Times Book Review


[A] fluently written, ingeniously researched, thrillerish work of popular history… Mr. Kinzer has brightened his dark tale with an abundance of racy stories. Gossip nips at the heels of history on nearly every page.
Wall Street Journal


[A] bracing, disturbing and serious study of the exercise of American global power… Kinzer, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, displays a commanding grasp of the vast documentary record, taking the reader deep inside the first decades of the Cold War. He brings a veteran journalist’s sense of character, moment and detail. And he writes with a cool and frequently elegant style.
Washington Post


[A] fast-paced and often gripping dual biography.
Boston Globe


Born into Eastern establishment privilege, these two men strode into the uppermost strata of the U.S. government with a virulent anti-communist bent that infused US foreign policy during the Cold War. The siblings were temperamental opposites.... This approachable history is a candid appraisal of how the Dulles's grandiose geopolitical calculations set in motion events that continue to reverberate in American foreign policy today.
Publishers Weekly


Award-winning foreign correspondent Kinzer uses Wild West mythology—with the good guys gunning down the bad guys in a lawless town—to explain the policies of Cold War Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles.
Library Journal


An author tending toward criticism of American foreign affairs, Kinzer casts a jaundiced eye on siblings who conducted them in the 1950s. Framing his assessment as a dual biography of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles, Kinzer roots their anti-Communist policies in their belief in American exceptionalism.... A historical critique sure to spark debate. —Gilbert Taylor
Booklist


[T]he dark side of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration through the activities of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, the director of the CIA. The author reveals the pair's responsibility for the wave of assassinations, coups and irregular wars....  [T]he author clearly presents the Dulles family's contributions to the development of a legal and political structure for American corporations' international politics. A well-documented and shocking reappraisal of two of the shapers of the American century. (Best Nonfiction Book of 2013.)
Kirkus Reviews