Publisher Description

During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world. John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world? The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies - many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country's role in the world. Propelled by a quinlessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States.These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran. The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world.

Author Biography

Stephen Kinzer is the author of Reset, Overthrow, All the Shah's Men, and numerous other books. An award-winning foreign correspondent, he served as the New York Times's bureau chief in Turkey, Germany, and Nicaragua and as the Boston Globe's Latin America correspondent. He is a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, contributes to The New York Review of Books, and writes a column on world affairs for The Guardian. He lives in Boston.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1 PART I: TWO BROTHERS 1. Unmentionable Happenings 7 2. The Taint of My Environment 37 3. Dull, Duller, Dulles 63 4. That Fella from Wall Street 86 PART II: SIX MONSTERS 5. A Whirling Dervish with a College Education 119 6. The Most Forthright Pro-Communist 147 7. A Matchless Interplay of Ruthlessness and Guile 175 8. The Self-Intoxicated President 216 9. The Tall, Goateed Radical 247 10. The Bearded Strongman 284 PART III: ONE CENTURY 11. A Face of God 311 Notes 329 Bibliography 368 Acknowledgments 383 Index 385

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." --The Wall Street Journal "Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book... A riveting chronicle." --The New York Times Book Review "[The Brothers] is 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." --The Washington Post "[A] fast-paced and often gripping dual biography." --The Boston Globe "Stephen Kinzer's sparkling new biography...suggests that the story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America." --Washington Monthly "Two exceptionally important stories take up the bulk of Kinzer's book, and both are told with considerable insight and disciplined prose." --Bookforum "The errors of the Dulles brothers are vividly described in this highly entertaining book...A thoroughly informative book." --Revista: The Harvard Review of Latin America "A historical critique sure to spark debate." --Booklist "The culmination of an oeuvre (All the Shah's Men, Overthrow and others) featuring the Dulles brothers in supporting roles, The Brothers draws them from the shadows, provoking a reevaluation of their influence and its effects." --Kirkus.com "A secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our own times." --John le Carré "Kinzer tells the fascinating story of the Dulles brothers, central figures in U.S. foreign policy and intelligence activities for over four decades. He describes U.S. efforts to change governments during this period in Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries in exciting detail." --John Deutch, former director, Central Intelligence Agency "As someone who reported from the Communist prison yard of Eastern Europe, I knew that the Cold War really was a struggle between Good and Evil. But Stephen Kinzer, in this compressed, richly-detailed polemic, demonstrates how at least in the 1950s it might have been waged with more subtlety than it was." --Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Revenge of Geography "A disturbing, provocative, important book. Stephen Kinzer vividly brings the Dulles brothers, once paragons of American Cold War supremacy, to life and makes a strong case against the dangers of American exceptionalism." --Evan Thomas, author of Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World "The Dulles brothers, one a self-righteous prude, the other a charming libertine, shared a common vision: a world run from Washington by people like themselves. With ruthless determination, they pursued, acquired, and wielded power, heedless of the consequences for others. They left behind a legacy of mischief. Theirs is a whale of a story and Stephen Kinzer tells it with verve, insight, and just the right amount of indignation." --Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War

Review Quote

Two exceptionally important stories take up the bulk of Kinzer's book, and both are told with considerable insight and disciplined prose.

Excerpt from Book

INTRODUCTION When John Foster Dulles died on May 24, 1959, a bereft nation mourned more intensely than it had since the death of Franklin Roosevelt fourteen years before. Thousands lined up outside the National Cathedral in Washington to pass by his bier. Dignitaries from around the world, led by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany and President Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan, came to the funeral. It was broadcast live on the ABC and CBS television networks. Many who watched agreed that the world had lost, as President Eisenhower said in his eulogy, "one of the truly great men of our time." Two months later, Eisenhower signed an executive order decreeing that in tribute to this towering figure, the new super-airport being built at Chantilly, Virginia, would be named Dulles International. Enthusiasm for this idea waned after Eisenhower left the White House in 1961. The new president, John F. Kennedy, did not want to name an ultra-modern piece of America's future after a crusty Cold War militant. As the airport neared completion, the chairman of the Federal Aviation Authority announced that it would be named Chantilly International. He left open the possibility that a terminal might be named for Dulles. That sent partisans into action. One of them was Dulles's brother, Allen, who had run the Central Intelligence Agency for nearly a decade. Pressure on Kennedy grew, and he finally relented. On November 17, 1962, with both Eisenhower and Allen Dulles watching, he presided over the official opening of Dulles International Airport. "How appropriate it is that this should be named after Secretary Dulles," Kennedy said in his speech. "He was a member of an extraordinary family: his brother, Allen Dulles, who served in a great many administrations, stretching back, I believe, to President Hoover, all the way to this o≠ John Foster Dulles, who at the age of 19 was, rather strangely, the secretary to the Chinese delegation to The Hague, and who served nearly every Presidential administration from that time forward to his death in 1959; their uncle, who was secretary of state, Mr. Lansing; their grandfather, who was secretary of state, Mr. Foster. I know of few families and certainly few contemporaries who rendered more distinguished and dedicated service to their country." Then, in what became a newsreel clip seen around the world, Kennedy pulled back a curtain and unveiled the airport's symbolic centerpiece: a larger-than-life bust of John Foster Dulles. It was on a pedestal overlooking an evocative reflecting pool at the center of the airport that the architect, Eero Saarinen, hoped would calm travelers' turbulent spirits. Half a century after Dulles's death stunned Americans, few remember him. Many associate his name with an airport and nothing more. Even his bust has disappeared. During renovations in the 1990s, the reflecting pool at Dulles International Airport was filled. The bust was removed. When the renovation was complete, it did not reappear. No one seemed to notice. After several fruitless inquiries, I finally tracked down the bust. A woman who works for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority arranged for me to view it. It stands in a private conference room opposite Baggage Claim Carousel #3. Beside it are plaques thanking the Airports Authority for sponsoring local golf tournaments. Dulles looks big-eyed and oddly diffident, anything but heroic. Dedicated by the president of the United States while the world watched, now shunted into a little-used room opposite baggage claim, this bust reflects what history has done to the Dulles brothers. A biography published three years after John Foster Dulles died asserted that "he provoked an extraordinary mixture of veneration and hatred during his lifetime, and since his death, in spite of a surge of emotion in his favor towards the end, his memory has remained contentious and intriguing." That memory faded quickly. In 1971 a journalist wrote that although the Dulles name had not been completely forgotten, "certainly most of the éclat had gone out of it." John Foster Dulles was, as one biographer wrote, "a secretary of state so powerful and implacable that no government in what was then fervently referred to as the Free World would have dared to make a decision of international importance without first getting his nod of approval." Another biographer called his brother, Allen, "the greatest intelligence officer who ever lived." "Do you realize my responsibilities?" Allen asked his sister when he was at the peak of his power. "I have to send people out to get killed. Who else in this country in peacetime has the right to do that?" These uniquely powerful brothers set in motion many of the processes that shape today's world. Understanding who they were, and what they did, is a key to uncovering the obscured roots of upheaval in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A book tracing these roots could not have been written in an earlier era. Only long after the Dulles brothers died did the full consequences of their actions become clear. They may have believed that the countries in which they intervened would quickly become stable, prosperous, and free. More often, the opposite happened. Some of the countries they targeted have never recovered. Nor has the world. This story is rich with lessons for the modern era. It is about exceptionalism, the view that the United States is inherently more moral and farther-seeing than other countries and therefore may behave in ways that others should not. It also addresses the belief that because of its immense power, the United States can not only topple governments but guide the course of history. To these widely held convictions, the Dulles brothers added two others, both bred into them over many years. One was missionary Christianity, which tells believers that they understand eternal truths and have an obligation to convert the unenlightened. Alongside it was the presumption that protecting the right of large American corporations to operate freely in the world is good for everyone. The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world. Copyright © 2013 by Stephen Kinzer

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