Brothers (Kinzer) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)


Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Brothers:

1.  Start with the personalities of the two brothers: how do they differ from one another, and how they are similar? How did the family background shape the brothers' beliefs, attitudes, and actions as adults? Do you admire one brother more than the other?

2. Talk about the brothers' personal lives as adults: their relationship with one another, their spouses, and their children.

3. Kinzer examines the brothers' outsized influence in foreign policy as Secretary of State and Director of Central Intelligance. Is the author overly condemnatory...or are his criticisms on target? Critics say Kinzer does not take into account the tenor of the times: the fact that the Soviet threat was real and increasing and that China had come under Communist control, threatening to destablize the East. What are your views? Did the Dulles brothers overreach ... or were their policies and actions appropriate for the time?

4. To what degree does the United States have the right to interfer in other countries' governments? Do we have the right to overthrow foreign governments? Assist with or spur assassinations? What if our vital national interests are at stake? How do we determine what our national interests are? Have those "interests" changed over the past 50-60 years, since the time of the Dulles brothers? Or do our national interests remain the same—only the tacts change?

5. Talk about the Dulles family's financial support of preNazi and Nazi Germany. To what degree was the family complicit in the rise of Nazi power?

6. To what extent did the Dulles brothers operate foreign policy for the benefit of American corporations? Is that a fair, or unfair, assessment?

7. Talk about the CIA era under Allen Dulles. Lyndon B. Johnson once referred to it as "Murder Inc." Was he right?

8. Does this book alter or confirm your views of American foreign policy over the years? Were you suprised by what you read in The Brothers?

9. How would you describe the long-term influence of the Dulles brothers on US foreign policy?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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