Enemies: A History of the FBI - Hardcover

Weiner, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400067480 ISBN 13: 9781400067480

Publisher: Random House Inc, 2012

Synopsis

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post · New York Daily News · Slate

“Fast-paced, fair-minded, and fascinating, Tim Weiner’s Enemies turns the long history of the FBI into a story that is as compelling, and important, as today’s headlines.”—Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Oath
 
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Enemies is the first definitive history of the FBI’s secret intelligence operations, from an author whose work on the Pentagon and the CIA won him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
 
We think of the FBI as America’s police force. But secret intelligence is the Bureau’s first and foremost mission. Enemies is the story of how presidents have used the FBI as the most formidable intelligence force in American history.
 
Here is the hidden history of America’s hundred-year war on terror. The FBI has fought against terrorists, spies, anyone it deemed subversive—and sometimes American presidents. The FBI’s secret intelligence and surveillance techniques have created a tug-of-war between protecting national security and infringing upon civil liberties. It is a tension that strains the very fabric of a free republic.

Praise for Enemies
 
“Outstanding.”—The New York Times
 
“Absorbing . . . a sweeping narrative that is all the more entertaining because it is so redolent with screw-ups and scandals.”—Los Angeles Times

About this title

Review:

Truly impressive ... [Enemies] could have been put together only by a journalist of Weiner's stature (Keith Lowe Sunday Telegraph)

A history that moves at the pace of a James Ellroy novel. But Weiner's truth is wilder even than Ellroy's fiction. Weiner sets the record straight on the FBI's first 100 years using only the Bureau's documents and oral testimony, most of which has never been seen (David Blackburn Spectator)

An outstanding piece of work, even-handed, exhaustively researched, smoothly written and thematically timely ... This is certainly the most complete book we are likely to see about the F.B.I.'s intelligence-gathering operations, from Emma Goldman to Osama bin Laden (Bryan Burrough New York Times)

Extensively researched, admirably understated, yet terrifically entertaining (Boston Globe)

Important and disturbing ... Weiner lays bare a record of embarrassing, even stunning failure, in which the bureau's lawlessness was matched only by its incompetence ... [he] has done prodigious research, yet tells this depressing story with all the verve and coherence of a good spy thriller (New York Times Book Review)

A fascinating account of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterespionage snooping over the past century ... A very good read (Wall Street Journal)

An authoritative and often frightening history of what has been, in effect, America's secret police ... A sober, monumental and unflinchingly critical account of a problematic institution (Kirkus Reviews)

An important, judicious account of the tension between national security and civil liberties (Publishers Weekly)

Fascinating ... an important and biting inquiry into an agency that protects Americans in a dangerous world while straining against the limitations we rightly impose upon it (San Francisco Chronicle)

[A] masterpiece ... reads like a thriller, but don't let the heart-pumping prose fool you ... a scholarly tour de force that will be an instant classic for any serious student of American national security (Amy Zegart (author of Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI and the Origins of 9/11))

About the Author:

Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting and writing on secret intelligence and national security. As a correspondent for The New York Times, he covered the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington and terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and other nations. Enemies is his fourth book. His Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA won the National Book Award and was acclaimed as one of the year’s best books by The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Time, and many other publications. The Wall Street Journal called Betrayal “the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” He is now working on a history of the American military.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1400067480
• ISBN 13: 9781400067480
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 537