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Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones is an Emeritus Professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh. He studied at the Universities of Wales, Michigan, Harvard, and Cambridge, and is the honorary president of the Scottish Association for the Study of America. He has held visiting fellowships and professorships in Harvard, Berlin, and Toronto. He is the author of a prize-winning book on the American left, and of sixteen other books published in eleven languages, mainly on US intelligence history, including The CIA and American Democracy (1989), The FBI: A History (2007), In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence (2012), and We Know All About You (2017).
This concise history of the Central Intelligence Agency manages to include nearly all of the agency's biggest hits and greatest catastrophes. He [Jeffreys-Jones] brings a depth of knowledge that provides innumerable fascinating anecdotes * The Guardian * [A] terrific new history ... This book is the best kind of constructively critical history, told with a refreshingly wry and dry sense of humour-qualities that are all too rare in extant accounts. * Timothy J. Lynch, Australian Book Review * A masterful but concise sweep of analysis; all done in just over 200 pages. ... [The] final chapters are a graceful illustration of why professional historians matter so very much. * Richard Lofthouse * This is a deep dive into often dark and troubling history. No punches are pulled and if you're interested in foreign policy and the rise of American power, this is well worth a read. * All About History * well-researched...has salient points to make about President Obama's overuse of drone strikes, and how books were cooked to cover the absurdly low casualty figures of innocent people who were killed because of inaccurate strikes and false intelligence. * Martin Chilton, The Independent * an excellent history of the CIA - erudite but fluent and accessible. It engages with important issues of interpretation while at the same time driving forward a compelling narrative of events. It is concise yet wide-ranging, tracing the history of US intelligence from its beginnings to the Biden presidency. ... both balanced and compelling. * Mark White, BBC History Magazine * An insightful and disturbing history of an American institution. * Kirkus Reviews * Who better to write about the CIA than a Welsh-born Scottish academic who began his career steeped in standard anti-Americanism of the European left? In a clutch of books over nearly a half century, Jeffreys-Jones has answered no one. Here, his perspective is standing: how does the CIA stand with, above all, the President but also Congress, the American public and even, on occasion, people abroad. That perspective - plus his own standing as a foreigner both detached from and deeply immersed in things American - lets him provide fresh insights on episodes from the Bay of Pigs to the creation of the director of national intelligence, to the dissing of intelligence by Trump. This book is a pleasure. * Greg Treverton, former chair of the US National Intelligence Council under President Obama * Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones has written a thorough, engaging history of the CIA. In this wide-ranging, thoughtful narrative, he takes us from the pre-history of the agency up through the controversies of the twenty-first century. Anyone interested in intelligence history or the current role of the CIA in American politics should read this book. * Kathryn Olmsted, author of Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 *
