HN Books @HNBooksMonth

The best books of Hacker News.

Hacker News Comments on
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Tim Weiner · 5 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" by Tim Weiner.
View on Amazon [↗]
HN Books may receive an affiliate commission when you make purchases on sites after clicking through links on this page.
Amazon Summary
With shocking revelations that made headlines in papers across the country, Pulitzer-Prize-winner Tim Weiner gets at the truth behind the CIA and uncovers here why nearly every CIA Director has left the agency in worse shape than when he found it; and how these profound failures jeopardize our national security.
HN Books Rankings

Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.
How about "Legacy of Ashes"?

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/03...

nyolfen
you know this one is good because the cia denounced it. i started it earlier this week.
_iyig
Came here to post this. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. For one thing, the quality of the author’s research speaks for itself:

“The book is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Ashes_(book)

Met a guy recently and he recommended "The Way of the Knife":

https://www.amazon.com/Way-Knife-Secret-Army-Earth/dp/B00QSF...

and "Legacy of ashes"

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/03...

---

I downloaded the ebook to WoTK -- reviews of it are good, but I haven't started reading it just yet.

>The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions

I recently read Legacy of Ashes[0], which I thought would be a sort of thrilling history of the spy game in America, but turned out to be a chronicle of blunder after blunder by the CIA. Fascinating stuff.

Having read that, I'm not naive enough to believe the cause of "most" global instability is due to the CIA; that's giving them far too much credit.

[0]http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/030...

cm3
Oh, they're not alone in it but operate globally and are a repeat offender. It seems that they took over from Britain right after those started the whole two-state/one-state debacle in the middle east. Before that, Britain was the major offender. Like Britain, other offenders like France, Belgium, Spain, and the list goes on, are not as clearly and strongly involved in meddling with other nation's fates anymore. When viewed over a longer time span, one cannot help but notice the same abstract patterns, regardless of who did it. I don't know what has to happen for humanity to evolve in this regard.
> Imagine if the US Army wouldn't divulge the capabilities of a new fighter jet to the very people who were authorizing the money for its construction.

No need to imagine. This happens. Covert areas of defense spending have always been conducted in the dark, often with blank checks.

The military, NSA, CIA, etc. are in the game of accumulating hidden capabilities. This is the job the American people have given them, and yes, it is a constant arbitrage at odds with, among other things, their own privacy and fiscal responsibilities.

A fascinating read on this topic, regardless of accuracy: http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/030738...

scalable
There is a difference in doing things overtly and covertly. If they are doing it covertly they will probably think it through a lot more carefully, since the stakes are higher. And if some things that were previously done covertly but are now done overtly, it doesn't sound so far fetched that other things that were earlier not done at all are now done in secret.

EDIT:speling

startuplulz
> And if some things that [were] previously done covertly but [are] now done overtly, it doesn't sound so far fetched that other things that were earlier not done at all are now done in secret.

Citations?

scalable
I have only stated my beliefs, and have not claimed to have the facts. I base my belief on this idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
None
None
fpp
A much more fascinating read on this topic is Kafka's "The Castle", "The Trial" or even better Heller's Catch-22.
HN Books is an independent project and is not operated by Y Combinator or Amazon.com.
~ yaj@
;laksdfhjdhksalkfj more things
yahnd.com ~ Privacy Policy ~
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.